


Diplomatic Relations

by Kahika



Series: Relay Monument Incident [10]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Communication, Crew as Family, Dancing, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Plans For The Future, Secret Relationship, Tango
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 19:01:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: Families in danger, old trauma, the future, and new responsibilities are a lot to handle even without keeping a relationship under wraps while wading into a war. At least Ashley and Garrus don't need to face it alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and happy New Year (and happy Epiphany, as Ashley's family would celebrate)! As with OpSec, all chapters of this fic are partially written already, so it _will_ be finished, but I can make no promises about speed.
> 
> Also as with OpSec, it's only really one chapter that's explicit (and it ain't this one); the rest are T at the most.
> 
> Some series notes:  
> 
> 
> * I've been toying with username/pseud change ideas, so if this series starts to display under a different writer, don't worry, it hasn't been stolen.
>   
> 
> * Remember how the earlier fics in this series came with relevant song recs? I finally made [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/pohutukaryl/playlist/1saHVADcjRkQFBchq26f0c) with those recs and with other songs that made me think of these two as their relationship's developed throughout the _Incident_. ([ _With All the Trimmings_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5602567) has [a Youtube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj3DfYiRo4_5udXRwEWv9TyQHfJYGfTyE) of the songs for each section because one of the songs in there isn't on Spotify and with much fewer songs, that was a problem.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two families reunite. One learns a secret.

On one hand, Shepard's invitation to join her for the meeting with the quarian admiralty, as her XO and a Spectre, is pretty exciting, because it's added responsibility, recognition of her dual status, and showing another species' leaders that dual status.

On the other hand, if this turns out to be some kind of boring diplomatic meeting, she's going to kill Shepard to get out of this once they're finished with introductions to the admirals ("Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams, also a Spectre"). Ashley may have some diplomatic powers as a Spectre but that doesn't mean she _likes_ the negotiation, and if there's any quarian she wants to see, it's Tali, and Tali isn't here. Plus, a refugee center told her recently that her family was there but had since left for the Citadel, and by Garrus's calculations they might reach the Citadel today, so she's been checking her omni-tool for updates ever since.

Where she usually relies first on facial features to differentiate people, Ashley now has to resort to the different fabrics the admirals are using in their envirosuits - she's going to be screwed if they change suits. (She has to wonder if, like military uniforms or turian markings, the fabric colors or designs mean anything.) However, as they start talking, she finds she can associate names to voices (accents _and_ pitches), body language, and, interestingly, attitudes towards the geth.

Because of _course_ the quarians are going after the geth _now_. Ashley raises an eyebrow in Shepard's direction, but, deciding that 'are you insane?' would not be considered a diplomatic question, echoes, "Your 'homeworld': You're trying to retake Rannoch?" That was the name Tali had mentioned three years ago, right?

Raan (didn't Tali once mention an aunt with a similar name?) confirms it, and as the admirals explain both the first war and their current attack for her, Shepard takes every opportunity to criticize the quarians' actions 'murdering' the geth three hundred years ago and attacking them now, driving them straight to the Reapers. It's a little hard to listen to, so Ashley tries to focus on their current attack, and despite seeing this as a worthy cause started at a stupid time, finds herself agreeing with Koris that they shouldn't have involved the civilian ships. Even the Turian Hierarchy, which centers the military in their society to the point of it covering all public services, is trying to get their non-combatants out of the war, and the Migrant Fleet is driving their liveships straight into geth territory.

So she's glad when Shepard beats her to offering to board the geth dreadnought and disable the Reaper signal so that the civilians can retreat. Another new admiral comes as a surprise, especially when that admiral introduces herself as Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_. Maybe it's a little racist of her to be unable to identify her friend just because she's wearing a different envirosuit from the last time she saw her, but to be fair, she's pretty sure that Tali's walking differently these days too. A little more steel in her spine and confidence in her stride. It's a good look on her, just a long way from the nervous jitters she used to have on the SR-1.

(Ashley is so very proud of her.)

"When did you become vas Normandy? I thought you'd be vas Neema forever," she says, as she, Shepard, and Tali retreat from the other admirals to the conference room. "And I definitely didn't think you guys could take alien ship names."

"We do change names if we change ships, but no, we don't usually take alien ship names," says Tali. "They forced vas Normandy on me last year."

"'Forced'?"

Tali hesitates. "It's a long story."

"I'd like to hear it," Ashley says, a little stung by that hesitation and deflection despite herself. "I'd really love to catch up."

With a nod of her head towards the other quarians, Tali murmurs, "Not in front of the other admirals."

 _Oh_. Of course she'd want to keep things professional with her important new peers. Ashley nods. "How about we have an SR-1 meeting, Admiral Zorah?" It'll be a good distraction from waiting by her omni-tool all day, too.

Tali's spine straightens a little at her rank, but if Ashley's not mistaken, her posture manages to brighten a little too. "I'd like that."

"Good idea, LC," Shepard adds, tugging at the collar of her dress jacket.

"Let's do port obs, once Shepard and I get out of our dress blues," she suggests. "I think Garrus - ah, Adviser Vakarian has some dextro drinks we can filter for you."

" _Adviser_ Vakarian? No one's living in port obs? I've missed a lot," Tali says.

She has no idea.

 

When she gets back to her room to change out of her dress uniform, Garrus is already there, his gaze somewhere out the window despite having an omni-tool app open above his wrist.

"Hey," she says, unpinning her medals from her jacket as the door locks. "What's with the thinking face?"

"Oh, I want to hear about the meeting first," he says, putting his omni-tool to sleep as he turns towards her. When he catches sight of her, the first time he's seen her in dress uniform in person since she was promoted, he looks her up and down, then puts a hand on her waist. "I like this better than your enlisted dress uniform."

"You've seen this in Sarah's wedding photos," she points out, bemused.

"Sarah's wedding photos were small and nothing compared to having the real thing in front of me," he says.

When he draws close and leans down, she expects him to kiss her, but he dips lower to press his teeth to her jaw, and with a smile despite herself, she pushes him away.

"Stand down, Officer, I'm getting changed for another meeting," she says, and he draws his mandibles but goes to fetch her medal box.

"Why another one?" he asks, as she starts getting changed. "What happened at the first?"

"Well, the quarians are at war with the geth and they need help," she says, and Garrus sighs. " _But_ , Tali's here, and she's an admiral now, and vas Normandy for some reason, so she doesn't want to chat in front of her co-leaders. The second meeting's an SR-1 catchup - you're coming, by the way."

His mandibles flare as he takes her medals to put away. "Huh," he says. "I thought I saw her coming aboard, but I had no idea about the promotion. Good for her. Are we meeting in the mess hall?"

"Port obs," she says. It's comfortable, casual, and able to be locked to keep out newer crew. "I'm bringing those Galaxy Swirls I stole from Sarah's flat - filter Tali something nice, will you?"

"I don't have her favorites, but I'll figure something out," he says.

"Okay," she says, smiling. With that sorted, she feels she should address the elcor in the room before inviting everyone else. "So. What was with the thinking face?"

"Oh. Well. Seeing Tali got me thinking." He pauses, looking a little awkward. "How much did you tell her about us back then?"

"I... didn't. Explicitly," she adds hurriedly. "I might have asked her if she'd heard from you... a lot."

"Okay." Garrus takes a breath and releases it. "Because, uh, she knows about us sleeping together the first time."

Only half out of her slacks, Ashley stops to stare at him. "What?"

"She caught me taking the emergency allergy pills at lunch, and she put two and two together. Also, she said we kept staring at each other."

How could she have been so obvious? She cringes, but continues to undress. "Oh my God -"

"She actually told me to spend more time with you while we still could," he says. "That we both deserved more than the crap the Alliance gave you."

"Huh," she says, his abrupt reappearance on her hotel room doorstep suddenly making sense to her. She may have to thank Tali for her relationship.

"And she figure out we slept together last year, too: Those bruises you gave me didn't just tell _Shepard_ I'm yours."

Ashley buries her face in her hands. "Holy crap, what was I thinking?"

"You weren't," he says, though his tone is kinder than she feels about her past actions, and he hangs her officer's jacket on her shoulders with more delicacy than the fabric and construction needs. "But my point is, Tali is very smart, and wants both of us to be happy, and would only blab to Wrex, not someone in the Alliance or even her fellow Admirals. Can we tell her?"

Tali's clever, fond of both of them, and like a little sister to Ashley. She deserves to be included in her slow steps in telling her family. "Yeah," she says eventually. "I'd hate to hide this from her. It's stressful, and she does like us."

"There are a lot of people who do," he says gently.

She studies him for a moment, trying to figure out what he means. "You think it's time to tell the squad?"

"I actually told Liara a little while back," he says, and she raises an eyebrow. "She's the Shadow Broker; I figured she bugged the ship on top of her seeing our e-mails and, uh, our run in with Talid."

Okay, understandable: Even if Liara hadn't figured out they were together now, she certainly knew they've had something for a while. Telling her has occurred to Ashley before, though not strongly enough for her to remember to discuss it with Garrus.

Of course, now she has to wonder, "Have you told anyone else?" This makes two more surprises on top of Javik being able to sense it with Prothean magic or whatever.

Garrus thinks about it, and then looks apologetic. "Uh, Jack, kind of. When you were in PT, I ran into her hanging out with Vega, and when she asked where my girlfriend was, she noticed that I didn't contradict her."

His stories about Jack tend to be fond if exasperated, but the one time she met the woman, Ashley was so preoccupied with her old lover and her dead commander having apparently faked and/or risen from death to work with terrorists that she'd barely paid her any attention. She doesn't know her enough - or at all - to trust her with the secret of her relationship, even if Garrus does. At one look from her, he immediately says, "I'm sorry. But trust me, she doesn't care enough to mention it to anyone else."

Ashley raises an eyebrow, making a mental note to confirm this with Shepard.

"Okay, yeah, you haven't really met Jack, but you know you can trust Tali, and Joker, for that matter," he says. "They've been here since the beginning, and Joker noticing the tension back then is part of how Jack worked it out. Chakwas will probably figure it out from your meds, but she always prefers an explicit heads up on changes. Adams would only care if we started making out on a console in engineering. Wrex would probably appreciate the update, though."

That all makes a lot of sense which she's been too scared to consider before now. In particular, she's astonished that Chakwas hasn't mentioned her new regular allergy medication beyond noting that it doesn't interfere with any of her painkillers. There's only one surprise in there: "Wrex?" The one time he'd visited her in hospital, Wrex hadn't breathed a word about Garrus nor asked about her love life, content with her news about her work and family and then to tell her about his work uniting the krogan clans. "Really?"

"Tali blabbed to him, and he caught us holding hands the morning you left the Citadel," he says. "He couldn't believe I never managed to visit you in hospital."

Despite forgiving him a while ago, a small, cruel part of her can't help but smirk. "Great, someone's on my side."

" _Anyway_ , I'm not asking for a decision now," he says. "But I'll have your six either way, so you can think about it before we get in there. And if you decide in front of them, give me a signal or something first so I'm not blindsided the way I was with Sarah."

"Okay." She pauses. "And thanks."

"Hm?"

"For letting me decide." Knowing how ingrained truth telling is in turian culture makes that mean so much more to her.

He leans down to headbutt her, then says, "Speaking of Sarah, anything from your family today?"

"Not yet," she says. "Anything from yours?"

The drawn mandibles as he shakes his head are depressingly familiar and a reason why they usually wait to be told about each other's families instead of asking; the news about her family has temporarily changed that status quo.

"The SR-1 meeting's a little bit me distracting myself instead of staring at my omni-tool all day," she admits. She didn't say it to Shepard nor Tali, even after they got away from the Admiralty, but Garrus makes her feel safe enough to admit it to him.

His eyes soften. "I could use the distraction too," he says. "I'll go round up the guys."

 

Chakwas turns out to be on sleep shift, her schedule a little upside down after supervising hasty preparations to receive quarians onboard ("Yes, they're suited up," Shepard had said, "but it's only polite to disinfect"), so Ashley heads towards Liara's office, cookies in hand. She pokes her head into the room, waving off a greeting from Glyph. "Hey, Liara - SR-1 meeting in port obs in five."

Liara doesn't even look up as she asks, "Is this an official meeting?"

"If I say yes, will you come?"

She thinks Liara smothers a smile as she finally turns to her. "Ashley, I'm very busy -"

"Aren't we all?" she asks. "Come on, how long has it been since you've seen Tali?"

"Nine months."

Not for the first time, Ashley feels that not wanting to join Cerberus has placed a rift between her and some of her friends from the first place she felt worthy of. "Half an hour to catch up and eat the Galaxy Swirls I stole from my sister." She shakes the cookie carton enticingly. Liara had been fond of them on the SR-1.

"Ashley -"

"Even Shepard's coming," she says, playing her trump card.

Liara presses her lips together. "Well, I suppose -"

"Great," Ashley says, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her out of her office before she can change her mind.

Bleakly, Liara gives Glyph a few instructions on the way to the lounge, then protests, "You said five minutes."

"Ah, but not whether it was Terran or Galactic Standard."

"That wasn't five minutes in either!"

"If I'd let you wrap up, some new thing would have come up and you'd never get away," Ashley reasons. "Right?"

For a moment, it looks like Liara's going to argue, and then she just nods instead.

"Shepard and I talk," Ashley reveals. "And not just about the war: She talks about you, too." And Ashley talks to her about Garrus, but she's not about to say 'we talk about our boy- and girlfriends' in a public hallway when most of the ship thinks she's single. "And she wishes you'd relax more."

"How hypocritical," Liara murmurs, but she's smiling faintly as Ashley opens the door to the lounge.

"That's actually what I said," Ashley concedes. "But you're both right."

"Right about what?" asks Tali, turning their way from behind the bar, where she's investigating the dextro drinks.

"The Savior of the Citadel and the Shadow Broker need to relax," says Ashley, placing the Galaxy Swirls on the coffee table in front of Liara as she sits down. "I'll be right back - don't eat all of them."

On her way out of the lounge, she bumps into Shepard, and soon also comes across Joker making his slow, ginger way from the elevator.

"Need a hand?" she offers. Her checkups with Chakwas often being scheduled right before or after Joker's mean she's actually gotten to know him more here than she did on the SR-1, and once in a blue moon, on bad days, he accepts her help.

"Nah, I'm good," he says, waving her off. "Just don't start without me."

"Copy that."

After she ducks into the mess hall to grab saucers and some non-alcoholic, non-mixer drinks, Garrus joins her with a couple of drink filters in hand, and goes poking through the cupboards for his drink stash.

"Adams is talking to Admiral Xen," he says, emptying a couple of sachets into one of the filters. "I wasn't sure if I could interrupt."

"Ah, well, he and Tali can catch up another time," she says, and puts the saucers and levo drinks onto a tray. Before taking Tali under her wing, she'd noticed that Adams had bonded with her, the first of the crew to reach out to one of the aliens. When she'd questioned him about it, he'd shrugged and said the kid had proven herself on the drive core.

He adds hot water to the filter, gets the process started, and puts the filter on the tray, then picks the whole thing up so she doesn't have to carry anything. Idly, Ashley wonders if turians had a concept of chivalry. "She missed him last year," he confides. "I bet she'll be glad he's back."

As they start towards the lounge, she hums in agreement, her mind turning over how Tali's bonded with the crew, with her, with Garrus (he's talked fondly of the 'Dextro Squad' when telling her about missions with Cerberus), how her telling Garrus they deserved more probably changed the trajectory of their relationship from just a comfort screw tangled up by grief and mutual crushes. Joker, if EDI has told him about them, is being incredibly tactful for once in his life by not teasing them about it, but either way, saved her from more overt embarrassment in the cargo bay even though he'd cockblocked them, and has been as much a part of the _Normandy_ being her home as the ship itself.

Tali and Joker have been through too much with them to care about the regs, especially with Tali not being Alliance, Joker having briefly defected to a terrorist organization, and nobody reporting Shepard and Liara's relationship.

"That's _your_ thinking face," Garrus observes. He balances the tray on one hip and reaches for the door control, but she stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"Hey," she says. "Let's do it."

"Hm?"

Her eyes flick behind him and find no one else down the corridor, and she's reasonably certain his bulk will hide her up until the point where he'd notice someone. She slips in front of him and takes his free hand; immediately he does the same quick but motionless glance around.

"Let's tell the SR-1 crew," she clarifies, with a squeeze of his hand. "You're right: We can trust them with this."

He gazes at her, looking unsure. "That thinking face was about them, not about how much I want this, right?"

"This Williams is as ready as she'll ever be."

His eyes going soft, Garrus squeezes her hands back. "Thank you," he breathes.

There's more confidence in her smile than in her heart. "Thank me when I'm not dishonorably discharged."

"I'll thank you then too," he decides. "So what's our strategy? Treat it like news for Tali?"

She considers the idea, then shakes her head. "Too big," she objects. "What if we just... go in there and be us? Be together. And only explain it if someone asks."

After a moment to study her, he nods. "Treat it as normal, hope they treat it as normal."

"Exactly."

"Alright, bravest," he says. "Just lead the way."

She doesn't _feel_ brave. She feels like she's standing at the edge of a cliff, the end of a gun, the console of a nuclear bomb.

But then, Garrus's definition of bravery seems to be doing things _despite_ her fear, not being fearless. Ashley takes a deep breath, lets his familiar words from missions as far back as the SR-1 bolster her, releases the breath and his hands, and opens the door.

"Thanks for that update," Tali's saying as they walk in. "It's been hard to keep up with the news."

"Ash, I saved your news for you to tell," Shepard says.

Ashley blinks - Shepard can't know they were thinking about letting their relationship out of the bag, right? - then grins, realizing Tali wasn't in the war room for introductions. "You are talking to humanity's second Spectre."

Tali squeals, the lights in her helmet flashing as she gets up to hug her; at her side, Garrus slips away to put the tray down and set the dextro drink he'd made in front of Tali's seat. "Congratulations! I've always thought you deserved something big like Spectre status."

It's always odd and humbling to realize that her friends had more faith in her than she had in herself. "Yeah, well, I'm still surprised they didn't strip me of my status after I killed Udina, but I'm not complaining."

"I keep trying to tell her," says Garrus.

She steps back from Tali and takes the seat next to him. They share a long look before she gives him a small nod and slides in closer to lean into him, and he slips his arm around her: One of their regular sitting positions when alone, but in front of other people for the first time.

Joker sits up and points at them. "Now _that's_ news! You two have been weird around each other ever since we got grounded trying to go to Ilos, and I didn't buy it for a _second_ when Garrus came back covered in hickeys saying he just 'saw' you on the Citadel last year, but what is _this_?"

So EDI didn't tell him. Huh.

" _This_ doesn't leave the room," Garrus says before she can, which is one more thing to appreciate. "And it's called a relationship."

"Holy crap," says Joker, at the same time as Tali says, " _Finally_."

"I'm sure this isn't the most exciting news," Ashley says.

"It _is_ the happiest," says Tali.

"We _are_ happy," Ashley agrees.

The conversation doesn't linger long on their relationship, but she's conscious of - and, gradually, more comfortable with - everywhere Garrus is touching her with witnesses. To his credit, there's only a hint of _I told you so_ in his expression when she looks to him. Mostly, he just looks happy, and proud - to be hers, she wonders, thinking of that Citadel elevator.

They're talking about curing the genophage (Tali grows sad at the news of Solus's death) when her omni-tool finally lights up with a text from Sarah: `they're here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!`

`YES`, Ashley texts back, following up with, `Tell them I love them!`

`tell them yourself`, Sarah replies. `will you be around for vid sync in a gst hour or so, they're checking in etc at the refugee center`

She checks the time conversion, and replies, `Of course I will. Call me when they're ready.`

"Work or personal?" Shepard asks, nodding to Ashley's omni-tool.

"Personal," she says, unable to keep the grin off her face. "My mom and all of my sisters are on the Citadel - Tali, they were on Earth, except the youngest off on her honeymoon on Nevos, and now they're all out of Reaper territory."

"I'm so glad," Tali says, bouncing in her seat. "How are everyone else's families?"

Liara met her father (whom Ashley is surprised to find is asari and does use female pronouns; Shepard mutters something about being called an "anthropocentric bag of dicks") keeping an eye on her on the Citadel, and it turns out Admiral Raan is in fact Tali's aunt and also her only living family, but Garrus still hasn't heard from his family, and Reapers have been spotted within the cluster Joker's family lives in.

"Damn," Ashley murmurs, crumbling a Galaxy Swirl in her hands. "I almost feel bad for getting good news."

Garrus headbutts her. "I think we could use some good news about one of our own."

"Oh," Tali breathes. "It's just like in _Fleet and Flotilla_."

The title rings a bell, but faintly. "What?"

As Tali starts squealing about a turian-quarian romance musical and Garrus starts shrinking into his seat, Ashley finally places where she remembers it from and elbows him. "That's in your combat playlist!"

"What?!" Joker demands, delighted. "Archangel listens to a sappy musical during fights?"

Ashley puts a hand over Garrus's at the use of his painful old codename, but all he says is, "I listen to _one_ song from it during firefights, because the bass line and the beat are good for shooting to."

"You fight to _Fleet and Flotilla_!" Tali crows.

"Weren't we supposed to be catching up, not harrassing me about my music taste?" Garrus grumbles. "Tali, tell her about your name."

It turns out her name was changed again last year, for a trial for treason which Garrus had decided was not his story to tell beyond 'we visited the Migrant Fleet; it was crowded'. This time, her explanation of quarian names includes planetary names ("Shepard nar Earth vas Normandy", "Ashley'Williams nar Sirona vas Normandy", and "Grunt'Urdnot nar Normandy vas Tuchanka" are discussed as examples), since the Fleet is trying to reclaim Rannoch.

"Auntie Raan would like to change her name to vas Rannoch if we win," she says moodily.

"What about you?" asks Ashley.

"I'd rather we hadn't tried this stupid war in the first place," says Tali. "Though maybe if there are more geth like Legion out there, we might actually reach _peace_."

"Legion's the geth you guys picked up last year, right?" Garrus has mentioned it to her a few times, but had changed the subject at the look on her face.

"That's right," Tali says. "I wasn't in favor of bringing it aboard at first, especially when I caught it sending Fleet data to the collective, but we found an understanding - a few months ago, we were talking about the potential for peace, until it suddenly stopped replying."

Ah. Ashley knows how that feels.

"I haven't seen anything on its whereabouts since your Collector base mission," Liara muses. "The geth are, unsurprisingly, better than most species at encrypting their data."

As with the Admiralty, everyone from the SR-1 has an opinion on the war, but when no one seems to share her thoughts of 'good idea with horrific timing and worse tactics', Ashley doesn't bother to mention it. Garrus seems to be the only one to notice her silence, looking at her with his mandibles drawn, but he doesn't explicitly call her out on it, just threads his talons through her fingers and starts steering the subject elsewhere.

By the time a GST hour's up, the Galaxy Swirls are gone, Shepard seems too sober for the number of drinks she's had (excusing herself with "biotics _and_ rebuild") except for the fact that she's snuggling with Liara, and they're all still talking. Ashley excuses herself for a call she's expecting, and Garrus squeezes her hand as she gets up to leave for her room.

Even with a Spectre's unlimited sync and high priority extranet access, Ashley still doesn't sync with Sarah very often, the varying time differences between the _Normandy_ 's travels and the Citadel being too much of a hassle to keep up with. But for the first time her mother and middle sisters have extranet access since the war started, she has to make an exception.

She taps impatiently on the couch as she waits for Sarah to call, remembering the time it would take to gather the family when their father had called home from his deployments. It probably doesn't help that Sarah may have underestimated the time it takes to check people in at the Alliance refugee settlement center. Garrus has explained that resettled turians, upon reaching their final destination, have another check of everything from their medical condition (and Lynn, she realizes, may be out of her meds, if she even had them on her when they ran), to their skills and educational and/or work history so they can be placed in appropriate occupations, to any religions they practice in case they need spiritual support. From her quick glance through files on the Alliance's settlement program, they do much the same thing.

She's considering calling Garrus to ask him how long it takes for the turians when her video sync app finally rings, and in her surprise she tries to hit the answer button too fast and too hard, her hand slapping through the interface instead. She gets it on the second try, waits for the connection to take -

And then her whole nuclear family are squashed into the frame, and Ashley enlarges the window to try and make the best of Sarah's not fantastic omni-tool camera quality and the holographic screen. They're not their usual selves - they're in ill fitting, probably donated clothes; they all look tired; Lynn looks like she's on edge - but they are gloriously _alive_ , and surrounding her baby sister who's been so quietly lonely in her time of grief.

Without thinking, she tries to touch the screen; it flickers as her finger goes through the image.

"It is _so_ good to see you," she manages to get out, suddenly finding it hard to speak.

"I just wish you could be here with us," says her mother. "But I know you have to work, now more than ever."

"Yeah," says Lynn. "What's this about you being a Spectre? When we had to list our family and show them our docs for the background checks, they all did doubletakes at your name, but _impressed_ , not... you know."

Ashley chuckles. Her happiness and pride in being given Spectre status pales in comparison to seeing her family alive and well. "The Council made me a Spectre a while back, part of a big recruitment drive. So I have the extralegal powers, a little diplomatic authority, and the priority extranet access."

"That is _so cool_ ," breathes Abby. "Dad would be proud."

She can't help looking to their mom for backup on this, because while being the second human Spectre is undoubtedly a milestone for the species, she's not totally sure Dad _would_ have been proud of his daughter working for aliens, particularly when so far they haven't done a lot for Earth just as he would have predicted. But Mom nods.

" _I_ am very proud of you," Mom says. "When I first learned what Spectres were, I never expected it would be one of my girls."

"Thanks, Mom," she says, her throat suddenly tight. "I just wanted to do some good, you know? Especially with all that time on medical leave."

"The hospital letting me know you were injured was one of the few messages I managed to receive," Mom says with a frown. "But you're looking a lot better than the message led me to believe."

"My concussion's healed up, and my shoulder's good enough to be in the field and on track for a full recovery as long as I do my exercises and listen to it when it hurts," she says. "But hey, enough about me, how have you been?"

Her heart goes out to them as between the three of them, they sketch out their journey from San Juan. They're light on details, mostly focusing on the sequence of towns and then space stations and planets and couching it in cheerful comments on the food and the people they've met, but she heard enough from the turian refugees to see the parallels and fill in the blanks: Hours of walking in unfamiliar places, not knowing where their next meal or clean water would come from once they ran out of the supplies they'd hurriedly packed back in San Juan, fights to get onto shuttles, narrow escapes from Reaper forces, overcrowded conditions in refugee camps and centers. Lynn does not explicitly say she's off her meds but the more she talks, the more Ashley can hear and see it, even with the terrible camera and screen. Sarah's journey to the Citadel from her honeymoon on Nevos had been through commercial travel, so Ashley finds it difficult to see her as a refugee even though she _knows_ that's what she is; her mother and middle sisters, however, have the much more typical narrative of those coming from Reaper invaded planets.

Her family's story ends in more hope than some of those turians' did: The refugee settlement center will be their home for a little while, but here, they'll learn about Citadel life without being suddenly thrust into it the way Sarah had been. Her mother talks about the resettlement services they're signed up for once they leave the center - housing, community integration, employment assistance - some of which sounds a bit like what Garrus's old team is doing for the turians, and all of which sounds very much needed.

"I'm looking forward to finding work," Mom adds. "So we can really get out of their hair."

"Their often metaphorical hair," Abby reflects. "There's more aliens than I expected here. At the center, I mean, since it's Alliance run."

"There is so much cross-species cooperation right now," Ashley says, thinking of her alien friends and boyfriend just down the hall. "And not just the big things like krogan on Palaven."

"It's very interesting to see," says Mom.

Sarah raises an eyebrow at her, and, unnoticed by the rest of their family, wipes her cheek in what looks to Ashley like the shape of Garrus's markings. Ashley does not shake her head, but she certainly would if it wouldn't draw too much attention to their silent conversation: Mom, Abby, and Lynn have just been through too much for another surprise, and Garrus means too much to her to tell people about him in just a video chat.

But there _is_ something else she's been wanting to offer her mother since she got word of their escape.

"Hey, Mom," she starts, and Sarah's eyes widen. "I've been supporting Sarah since she got to the Citadel. Would you like me to help you guys out too?"

"Ash, no, that's too much -"

"Nah, Mom, Ash gets Spectre pay now," says Sarah.

"I _wish_ I got Spectre pay," she says. "I'm just getting my Alliance salary - which I barely touch when I'm living on a ship, honestly. Let me help you." As her mother opens her mouth, she adds, "What good is this high rank if I can't support my family?"

At length, Mom says, "Alright. But the next time you're on the Citadel, you're coming over for dinner."

"Of course," she says, wondering if they'll be in their own place by then. "Alliance cooking is still crap."

"Ash is on the Citadel way more often than she came home to Amaterasu," Sarah says. "The _Normandy_ refuels and restocks here."

"It's less predictable, though," Ashley points out. "Especially with the way we keep finding abandoned fuel supplies out here."

Abby asks about work, and Ashley obliges her with generalities and things that aren't classified (though she's careful to skim over her sparring and strategizing time with Garrus as "with a squadmate"), realizing they'd probably want to talk about something besides their ordeal. She manages to ramble until she notices Lynn yawning and also realizes they must be tired.

"I should go," she says. "We have some important guests onboard, and I'm sure you guys have more to do at the center, eh."

"It's getting towards dinner time," says their mother. "Ash, I'm so glad to see you well, and I am very proud of the work you're doing."

"I'm glad to see you guys _safe_ ," Ashley says.

"Don't be a stranger," says Abby. "Have you used up your sync allowance?"

"I'm a Spectre," she says. "I have unlimited sync."

Lynn attempts to whistle, an ongoing project of hers. "Okay, you _definitely_ have to call more when time zones line up."

"I'll try," Ashley says, smiling. "I love you guys."

 

Garrus's mandibles are splayed and his teeth are showing as they get ready for bed, until she pokes him in the arm.

"What are you so happy about?" Sure, _she's_ that happy about her family being together, but she hadn't quite expected this level of joy from him.

"For starters, your family's reunited, and Tali's here, but mainly... I got to tell people," he says. "I got to be with you -" He wraps his arm around her waist to specify exactly how he was with her. "In front of our friends. I _finally_ didn't have to hide it."

 _Oh_. She smiles back at him, trying to share his pleasure. "It _was_ nice, wasn't it?"

"It's exhausting having to hold back all the time," he says. "And unlike telling family who have no context, we can be pretty damn sure that they'll be happy for us."

She reaches up to stroke his scarred markings, watching his eyes soften at her touch. "I get tired too," she offers, because despite the good reactions today, the pit in her stomach is less than 'pretty damn sure' about this.

"I know," he says.

"You do?"

"You relax so much the second we lock a door," he says. "You lose so much tension, you look like a different person."

Damn, she hadn't noticed, but now she's going to be thinking about it every time they're alone. "Huh," she says. She'd mentioned to Sarah how _emotionally_ comfortable she is with him one on one, but hadn't connected it to physical comfort nor to not having to hide her relationship with him.

"I mean, I figured part of it's the Alliance expectations and the Spectre pressure too -"

"It's both," she admits. Her former C-Sec agent is far too perceptive sometimes. She sighs, and says, "I _am_ working on this."

"I know that too," he says gently. "I'm hoping that absolutely nothing happening from today, and from Jack, except friends being happy for us will help."

"So am I," she says, and presses her forehead to his. For a moment, she just matches his breathing, and then she says, "Chakwas and Adams next, I think. And you can tell Adams." Garrus is closer to him, being able to talk to him about engineering adjacent topics. " _If_ nothing happens."

His mandibles splay. "How long do you want to wait?"

"Give me a few days and then check in again if I don't bring it up," she says, and he nods. "Oh, and are you still in contact with Wrex?"

"On and off. Work stuff. Complaining."

"What does he have to complain about? He got a cure for the genophage and extra help against the Reapers on Tuchanka."

His eyes narrow, his mandibles drawing. "Apparently all the women of Tuchanka want to have his kids."

So their former squadmate is... She makes a face. "Thank you, Garrus, that was more than I ever wanted to know about Wrex's sex life."

"If I have to know this, so do you."

"Yeah, well, he can know about _us_ ," she says, before either he can start going on about facing things together (which was never meant to apply to too much information about one of their friends) or she can decide against this in revenge for him bringing it up.

Hope and delight widen his eyes. "Really?"

She nods. "But I'd kind of like to see that conversation, if you don't mind sharing," she says. "I miss the big guy. He was like my weird krogan uncle."

"This ship is such a weird family sometimes," he says. "The krogan uncle, the quarian little sister, me and Shepard running around after Grunt..."

He's told her quite a few stories about the tank born krogan, with enough physical description for her to realize she'd actually seen Grunt in hospital. "I draw the line at Grunt being our son," she says.

"Of course he's not our son," he says, with such a determinedly serious look that she knows he's trying not to laugh. "He's mine and Shepard's."

"What the hell are me and Liara," she wonders. "Something short of stepmothers?"

It's then that Garrus bursts out laughing, and after a moment she joins him, but she doesn't miss the thoughtful look in his eyes.

"Speaking of family," he says eventually. "Are you thinking of telling yours about us, once we're on the Citadel? They're back together now."

"If they're more settled in by the next time we're there," she says. "It's their first time on the Citadel, and the safest place they've been since the war started. It's a lot to get used to, even before bringing in 'your eldest daughter or sister is dating an alien'. But I do want to tell them," she says, cupping his cheek in her hand and stroking his mandible with her thumb. "I want you to meet them."

"I'd like that," he says. "Meeting Sarah was great - not just because you talk about her a lot, but it's like seeing a glimpse of where you came from."

"I loved seeing you get along," she says. She loved seeing her two worlds collide, in a much more pleasant setting than Sarah meeting Shepard for the first time.

"She sends me encouraging cartoons of Earth animals," he says.

As surprised as she is delighted, Ashley laughs. "Why isn't she sending _me_ those things? _I'm_ the one who's going on a mission tomorrow."

"I can forward them to you if you want," he offers, awakening his omni-tool, but she reaches over to put it back to sleep.

"I don't need luck: Flashlights make easy targets."

"Oh, is _that_ why I outshot you during geth cleanup?"

"Shut up, we were pretty even," she says, caressing his face. "Hey, gimme a moment."

Garrus nods, picks up his toothbrush, and leaves as she kneels beside his bed; lately he's started setting out a folded blanket on the floor for her to kneel on if he knows in advance that she's staying over, which she finds so much sweeter because she's never asked for it.

Tonight, she prays for success on the dreadnought mission, so that the quarian civilians can retreat. She prays for the quarians to make it out of their own stupid war. But mostly, she gives thanks: For her family's safety and reunion, for Tali coming back into into her life, for her old friends not disapproving of her love, for her boyfriend trying to make her more comfortable on the metal grating he calls a floor. They may be entering another war, but there's a hell of a lot of good in her life right now too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a [_Requisitions_ side story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4519896/chapters/30402489) the day after this chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're not leaving this room until both of us have come at least once. I almost died, and there is a goddamn _geth_ going to the war room, and I need to feel _alive_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New username, still me!
> 
> As you may be able to guess from the summary, this is the chapter with smut.

Ashley's too angry to talk in the geth fighter they take back to the _Normandy_ , and once they're back aboard, she only speaks to James, telling him as she hastily shoves her guns into the locker that she'll tidy up later. She's still seething by the time she enters the battery still in her armor, tags the lock for privacy mode, and says, "Garrus."

He whirls around, mandibles flared. She can understand his surprise: After most missions, she only comes to his quarters once she's put some real clothes on and had some time to herself. "Ash," he says, reaching back to lock the Thanix terminal. "I knew you were back, but I didn't think you'd be here till later -"

She drops her helmet on the floor, uncaring of where it lands and then rolls. "Fuck me," she snaps, not in the mood for their usual snuggly debriefing.

His hands go to her armor clasps immediately, thank God for turian obedience, but he also puts his forehead to hers. "You okay?"

"I almost died on that dreadnought," she says, barely keeping the fury from shaking her voice. "Not just because of the geth, but because Admiral Gerrel decided to fire on it _while we were still onboard_."

His pupils narrow. "You're hot when you're angry, especially when it's not at me, and I'm obviously relieved to have you back alive, but I'm going to fuck you later so I can rip Gerrel's helmet off his face and spit on him."

Grabbing his hips, she yanks him towards her. "You're not leaving this room until both of us have come at least once," she snaps. "I almost died, and there is a goddamn _geth_ going to the war room, and I need to feel _alive_."

Another mandible flare. "There's a geth?"

"Shepard and Tali say we're safe, but I don't want to talk about it right now."

He nods. "Stress relief with a squadmate," he says, removing his visor and setting it aside. "Got it."

"Stress relief with the man I love," she corrects him, and he flashes her that bright, bicultural smile her mentions of loving him consistently inspire in him before he kisses her firmly, shoving her hard against the door. The ache in her shoulder bursts into actual pain, so she taps at his chest until he pulls away, confused. "Shoulder," she says. She must have pushed her body a little too much today, geth sending her usual mission adrenaline on overdrive.

Instantly he puts one hand between her head and the wall, his arm bracing her back and shoulder. "Spirits, sorry -"

"No, you're good. More to be angry at," she says. Her own body. Cerberus, for hurting her like this in the first place.

"You'll heal," he says gently. "Do you need your meds?"

She shakes her head. The pain's already fading to a more ignorable level. "All I need right now is you."

For a moment, he simply gazes at her, his eyes soft and warm, and then he kisses her again, anything but gentle, his teeth sharp on her lip, and she's grateful for it, because it means her mouth's too busy to tell him off for coddling her when she doesn't want it. Ceramic clinks against ceramic as their breastplates press together, and when she tries to tilt her hips to his, he pins her to the door with just one leg between hers. The thought that he's trapped her with his body alone sends a welcome thrill down her spine.

He's left her hands free. She reaches up to wrap her arms around his neck, just inside his carapace, and then digs her nails into the sensitive skin just below his fringe. He growls into her mouth, and breaks off the kiss in favor of scoring his teeth along her jawline, nipping every time she starts to get used to it. When he descends to her neck, he doesn't get very far before finding himself thwarted by the collar of her compression suit, higher on her neck than any of her uniforms.

"Go on," she says.

He scrambles for the seals on her hardsuit, and it occurs to her that this is the first time he's undressed her straight from a mission; every other time they've had sex, she was in clothing, not armor. But perhaps he's been studying it, because he makes much faster work of it than she'd expected even taking into account his earlier starts at the clasps. Before long, her compression suit's pooled around her ankles, and his touch goes gentle as he helps her step out of it.

Wanting to feel his skin and talons, she unclasps his gauntlets from the arm pieces of his hardsuit. He takes the hint and tosses them and his gloves aside, then kisses her so hard and unexpected that she loses her balance and has to catch him by the carapace to stay upright, but hell, that kind of force used for pleasure instead of pain is exactly what she was craving. His grin against her lips says he knows it or at least likes catching her off guard. Placing one hand firm on her waist, he slides his other hand up to her breasts and kneads one then the other, before making a noble attempt at unhooking her bra one handed. His bra removal skills have come a long way since his first failure in that Citadel motel so long ago, but one handed's still a little beyond him. Steadier on her feet now, she smiles against his mouth and reaches back to help him.

His teeth find her breast before her bra hits the floor. With teeth and tongue on one side and talons on the other making her gasp, she's not expecting it when the hand he'd had on her waist skims down between her legs and presses firmly against her.

"Wet already," he murmurs, a note of surprise in his undertone, warm breath against saliva cooled skin, and he shoves her panties down her thighs.

She wriggles them off, kicking them aside. " _Garrus_ -"

"Not wet _enough_ ," he says, and he lifts her up by the thighs.

"Garrus, I don't care," she says, wrapping her legs around his waist and rubbing against his armor for _some_ friction as well as signposting what she wants. "Fucking strip -"

"I don't know how you can say things like that with a straight face," he says, turning around with her. "I ought to call you 'filthiest' instead of 'bravest'."

"Me, filthy? You were the one saying you'd make me scream your name back in our chat."

His mandibles flap. "Way less embarrassing typed than in person."

"Then don't say it, just fucking do it."

"You know as well as I do that if I went in one step up from dry, you wouldn't be screaming because you're enjoying it," he says, his tone irritatingly reasonable.

Instead, he sits her on top of the Thanix terminal, letting her legs dangle from it; this, when he usually disapproves of putting _anything_ on it. He doesn't give her time to be surprised, spreading her thighs and lapping at her determinedly. She throws her head back, grabbing his head more to keep herself steady than to keep him there, and he grips her waist tightly in turn. It doesn't stop her from arching towards him, just stops that arch from turning into a fall off the terminal.

Still, as incredibly talented as his mouth is, as hard as that swipe of tongue "yes, _there_ " makes her hiss through her teeth, this isn't exactly what she's looking for right now. Grabbing him by the cowl, she hauls him upwards, and he offers no resistance as she starts unclasping his armor because her idiot is still frustratingly clothed. In between dropping the ceramic plates and then his compression suit to the floor, he sneaks in nips to her jaw and neck; only once he's naked and unsheathed before her does he lean in and kiss her. Hooking her legs around his waist, she draws him in closer, closer, _closer_ until she can slide against his cock, getting them both gasping.

"Ash," he manages to get out. She grins viciously: This comes second only to blowjobs for how quickly it breaks down his self control. "Shit -"

He wrenches himself away from her, and she laughs as he all but runs to the locker beneath his cot, blurting out the password too quickly for the verbal lock to parse the first time. On his return he's still hastily tugging a condom down his length, and he gives it one final rubdown to secure it before grabbing her waist -

\- and lifting her again. Confused, she lifts her legs to his hips again, but concludes they're going to bed.

"C'mon -"

To her surprise, it's by his weapons bench that he stops and puts her down. She raises an eyebrow, and in reply, he turns her around to face the bench. After so long without him she likes being able to see his face, and she suspects he still views kissing as a delightful novelty in lieu of being able to bite her without leaving evidence, so they almost always have sex face to face (with one delightful exception of morning spooning turned into morning sex), making this position rather a surprise.

Not an unwelcome one - hell, she's feeling wetter already. She sweeps some of his gear aside, taking hold of the bench, and her legs spread as he gently pushes her down to the metal. It's too gentle a push for her liking, but truth be told, though this has been one of her fantasies since before she even met him, having it happen with someone she loves is even better than the anonymous guys provided by her imagination.

"Is this alright?" he asks, the roughness in his voice offset by the question.

"Better than," she says.

"Good," he says, and without further warning, he shoves into her. Between the aggressive foreplay getting her wet in record time and the new-to-them position, it's surprisingly easy, but no less incredible.

" _Fuck_ ," she whimpers.

"As ordered," he says, and then, losing the cockiness: "You good?"

" _Very_ good," she says. "Go, go, g--"

She moans rather than finishing the command as he withdraws and then goes straight back in, taking her as relentlessly as she'd craved but couldn't quite articulate. With one hand he grabs hold of her waist to hold her steady; with the other he brushes her hair back from her face with a delicacy the exact opposite of where their hips meet and meet again.

"More," she breathes, needing more contact between them.

Surprisingly understanding her, he leans into her, the hard plates of his chest digging into her back. It hurts more when he moves against her than it does when they're face to face, but there's nothing that makes her feel alive like pleasure edged with pain, and though he doesn't hit her G-spot as much here as a human guy might, he drives deeper, fuller. She doesn't scream, but she doesn't need volume or words to express how much she loves this, loves him, loves feeling sexy and wanted and loved after having another species' leader write off the second human Spectre as acceptable collateral damage.

From the sound of his growling and purring, he's loving this too. As he presses his mouth to her shoulder, his pitch drops so low that she feels rather than hears it; the car engine noises only pause for him to say, "If I bite you right now, it would _not_ be communal shower friendly."

Even the idea of it makes her clench around him, and he groans at the sudden tightness.

"I almost want you to do it anyway," she says.

"Oh, spirits, don't say that," he groans. "It'll be bad for interspecies relations if I damage Alliance property."

She laughs, breathless, and reaches back to touch him, getting the back of his neck and his shoulder. With his free hand, he turns her head back towards him and kisses her, but their rhythm and breathing is so thrown off by the force of his hips slamming into hers that he soon breaks it off and resorts to pressing his teeth against her jaw.

"This is how turians fuck," he murmurs.

"Yeah, I've seen the porn," she says. She hadn't enjoyed watching turian porn actors go for it, but the real thing, with him, is better than she'd fantasized with some human lover. "How come we haven't -"

"I said it's how we _fuck_ , not how we have sex or make love. Better penetration - but harder to bite mandibles or anything else." He pauses, and then his mandibles flap as he says, "I'm banning myself from the word 'penetration' unless it's about guns."

Damn, and he'd been off to such a promising start at dirty talk when he'd called it fucking. Grinning, she decides to reword it for him. "A deeper and harder fuck."

"Okay, filthiest," he says, but he times it with a particularly hard stroke that has her crying out, " _Fuck_ ," her knuckles going white on the table. "Yeah, pretty sure that's exactly what you asked for when you walked in here; I'm trying to oblige."

"Shut your smartass mouth unless it's on me," she says, and he obliges that too, scoring his teeth against the back of her neck, her shoulders.

His hand drifts between her body and the bench, scraping talons against her breasts here, tracing the muscles of her abs there, southward without her realizing it until he's rubbing against her clit with every thrust. It's shaky, not a consistent pressure the way she usually likes it, but as an addition to the fuck she asked for, it gets her gasping a combination of curses and prayers and his name.

She is incredibly close when he draws all the way out of her and says, "Hang on."

"What?" she demands. She is _not_ up for another move across the room right now.

"You mind turning around?" he asks. "I wanna see you."

Somehow, that's simultaneously sweet and yet sexy. Grinning, she turns around and hops up onto the bench, letting her legs dangle. "Like what you see?"

His eyes and hands make a study of her body, thighs to ass to waist to breasts to jaw. "Spirits, _yes_."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

She groans as he drives back into her, but with the change of position she can hook her legs around him to help stop herself from moving on the bench. It doesn't take long: Something ignites in her veins bright as the flare from a mass relay, the delayed orgasm somehow more intense than she's used to, burning relief from both want and fury, skin and plates and force and friction all wrapped up in _love_. Garrus holds her steady as she almost falls, boneless, backwards onto the bench, pressing his forehead to hers as his hips keep driving into her, and she almost misses the moment when his eyes brighten blue and beautiful as his orgasm takes him too, disrupting his rhythm but not the strength in his arms around her.

For a moment, they simply catch their breath, and then once she can sit up by herself again, Garrus kisses her cheek, withdraws, and goes to throw out the condom. He's assured her that the rest of the crew wouldn't find them, which she hadn't even considered before he mentioned it, but of course her former C-Sec Agent, used to hunting for (and apparently tampering with) evidence, would think of it. She's grateful he did.

On his return, he brushes her hair behind her ear and says, "Bed?"

Lazily, she grins up at him. "Getting sleepy?"

"No, I just can't imagine that bench can be too comfortable."

It's not, as her body finally, half-heartedly, protests. "Bed."

She starts to slide off the bench, but soon shrieks as he scoops her up bridal-style and carries her down the steps and the walkway to his cot. Carefully, he sets her down on her back, more careful than he used to be before Mars, then digs out her ointment and a spare glove from the lockers beneath the bed. They've found that his bare hand rubbing in lotion can make chafing worse than it already is, so usually she applies the ointment herself, but if he's in the mood to do it without complaining that it's ruining a glove, she's not complaining either.

He sits between her legs so he can start on the insides of her thighs, a careful balance of gentle on still sensitive skin yet firm enough for good coverage and absorption. "Feeling alive again?"

"I might not walk tomorrow, but damn right I'm feeling alive," she drawls, her gaze fond even as Garrus smirks with pride. Fantastic sex and a bit (a lot) of chafing that her boyfriend's now looking after? Yes, she's feeling much more alive than when she was riding a geth fighter after surviving friendly fire. "Do you still want to spit on Gerrel?"

"Maybe when I don't have a beautiful naked woman in my bed," he says, a contented purr to his subharmonic as he works.

She grins, the ego boost easing the last of the tension the sex didn't. "Mm. That was something to tick off the bucket list."

"'Bucket list'?" he echoes, and she realizes the idiom might have translated literally.

"Things I wanna do before I die." At his further confused look, she adds, "I'll explain later," not wanting to describe hangings as pillow talk.

"Okay," he says. "So what did you want to do before you die?"

"Sex on a weapons bench."

Garrus growls and bends down to nip at her jawline. "I've been wanting to do that since the first _Normandy_. When you were bending over to clean the guns."

She smirks. After the Battle of the Citadel and the afterparty, she'd sometimes bent over a little farther than necessary to see if he'd react. She'd felt his eyes on her, and he'd made more excuses to help her with the guns than usual, but apart from that, he didn't react overtly. "Oh, good, you did notice."

"I'll never be able to concentrate on my work in here again. You know that, right?"

"When I said 'fuck me', I was expecting to be dragged down to your cot, not shoved around the furniture." His mandibles start to draw, and she adds, "But this was _much_ more fun." While the Commander in her is concerned about his work, mostly, she's amused by the memories they've now infused his workspace with.

"Oh, good," he says. "I was wondering if I was being too rough -" He coughs. "For you, not for your injury."

"No, that was _exactly_ what I needed," she says, and then realizes: "Hey, you didn't take your meds before we started. Go."

She shoves him off of her, and, grumbling, he rolls over to get the meds out of the locker beneath his bed. He has to get up to get a water bottle from the weapons bench (knocked on its side as they fucked on top of it but thankfully closed), but there's a deliberate sway to his hips as he walks away that lets her watch his ass guilt-free. While he takes the pill and a long drink, she continues with the ointment, then makes a face as she realizes her back's chafed up too. Like trying to put on sunscreen, she's never going to reach it all.

"Roll over," he says on his return. "I'll do your back."

She turns, and soon enough he starts rubbing the ointment into the chafed areas on her back.

"You're going to have to tell me the rest of this... 'bucket list'," he says. "Especially if there's more sex things on it."

"Only if you tell me yours," she says. She wants to help him achieve his dreams _and_ his fantasies.

"I actually did one with Shepard recently - obviously not a sex thing," he adds, cheerfully unnecessary; Shepard being gay, she suspects she'd be more astonished than upset if Garrus had sex with her. "But illegal, which is why I didn't invite you."

Ashley turns her head just enough to let the lift of her eyebrow ask all the questions for her.

"When we went out to play after she got back from Omega, that was at the top of the Presidium. I always wanted to see what it looked like up there."

"You played with _Mantises_ on top of the Presidium?"

"We didn't hit anyone," he says, his hands up in surrender, and she shakes her head, but decides to let it go. It's not his job any more to make sure that the law's upheld, and he was with a Spectre - though she'd be fascinated to see how Shepard would justify this to the Council. "Besides, I think you'd like it up there. You can see the whole Presidium - very romantic."

"I'm sure there are plenty of _legal_ romantic views on the Citadel," she says. Their old docking bay at C-Sec Academy, for one. His use of its number in his more anonymous e-mail address had amused her. "Or other places."

He bends down to kiss her shoulder, more gently now than he had been by the bench. "You're no fun."

"He says to the woman he just fucked on a cannon console and a weapons bench."

She can hear the smirk in his voice without even looking at him. "Point taken."

Once he's finished applying the ointment, he flops down onto the cot next to her, and she shifts to lie half on top of him, her head on his chest and her arm around his cowl. He curls an arm around her waist, absentmindedly stroking her hair as a contented purr rumbles in his chest.

"What did you get up to while I was gone?" she asks eventually. He'd been looking at a terminal when she walked in, but he'd willingly switched focus to her so abruptly that it couldn't have been time sensitive.

"Work, mostly," he says. "Talked to Victus: He, ah. Asked me what to do with the fleets when the Crucible's ready."

"Holy shit," she breathes. The people in the Alliance making these calls would be Rear Admirals or Generals, if not Admirals, and here they are calling Garrus their Gunnery Officer. "Big question."

"Yeah," he says, mandibles drawn slightly. "I told him that the way things are going now, we'll need to decide whether to keep defending Palaven or to go on the offensive. So when you walked in, I was modeling strategy ideas for either way based off how things are going in the reports."

"I interrupted," she realizes with dismay.

"Worth it," he says. "I wasn't really getting anywhere. I just kept going back to how strange it was to be asked."

"You have the most Reaper experience in the Hierarchy _and_ you're great at strategy," she says, headbutting him. "Victus wouldn't have asked you if you weren't so experienced, especially after that thing with his son." Garrus had explained how poorly that turian lieutenant's failure would have reflected on the primarch if he hadn't died a hero trying to fix it - he'd also wrapped his arms around her and told her how much he saw both her and Kaidan in Tarquin Victus's choice to go down with the bomb.

He hums, unconvinced. "I just don't feel ready. Millions of lives hang on my answers. This isn't leaving someone open to fire here so we can destroy a shipment of drugs there any more: It's letting people here die to protect more people over there."

"It's galactic war instead of a war on gangs," she summarizes. "But in a way it's the same thing: You're making the best decisions you can with the information you have. I believe in you, Garrus."

"You're my girlfriend," he says, something she's starting to recognize as fondness in his subvocal. "You're obliged to believe in me."

"Give _me_ more credit here even if you're not gonna give it to yourself," she says. "Just knowing how great you are with tactics and the things you pulled off in Archangel, I'd believe in you even if I wasn't in love with you."

His mandibles spread. "Thank you, bravest."

"I think 'smartest' makes more sense here," she reflects, half-joking. "Smart enough to know tactics, smart enough to believe in yours."

He chuckles for a moment, and then his eyes light up with remembrance. "Speaking of smart Williams women, I talked to Sarah."

Her eyebrows lift. "You what?"

"She sent me a chat request. I guess I forgot to turn off my messaging visibility."

She squints, trying to work out the time difference. "Isn't it ass o'clock over there? I'm gonna kill her." Sarah's been saying she was tired as far back as when Ashley was in hospital and Sarah hadn't yet made a mentor out of one of her nurses, but despite Ashley's urging, she hasn't been to the doctor, suspecting it's just the stress of her family's involvement in the war. Even now that their mother and sisters are safe, she's studying again; she shouldn't be staying up late to talk to Garrus.

"She wasn't sleepy after night shift; signed off when she finally went to bed." He shifts a little, the start of an attempt to get up. "She asked me to tell her once you got back -"

Glaring, she takes his arm and puts it back on her waist. "She's probably asleep." Or she'd better be, and Ashley doesn't want to risk an offline message waking her up; during all that time waiting for news from Thomas and from their family on Earth, Sarah had kept her omni-tool notifications on loud even while sleeping.

Garrus turns that _look_ on her that makes her feel like the only thing that matters in the world, and nods. "I'll tell her you're okay later. But here, she also said to give you a hug for her."

The thought of her boyfriend and her sister keeping each other informed of her condition is one that had never occurred to her in her wildest dreams, and oddly sweet. She melts in his arms as he squeezes her tighter. "What else did you guys talk about?"

"More getting to know each other stuff. She interrogated me."

She laughs, delighted, but decides to translate from cop into nurse. "She took your social history?"

"That." He pauses, looking puzzled. "Oh yeah, how do you build a car out of a pumpkin?"

"Is... this a turian joke?" Do turians even have pumpkins? His accent was stronger on it, making her suspect he actually said it in English.

"No, she said something about a story where a girl's pumpkin turned into a car?"

"Cinderella?"

"Yes!"

"There was a magic spell," she explains, trying not to laugh. "There was lots of magic in that story."

"Read it to me some time?"

It never ceases to be strange and flattering that someone with such a gorgeous voice can like hers so much. "Yeah, I will."

He kisses her forehead, and she allows herself to enjoy this a little longer before acknowledging her feelings about the mission she just got back from. The fury at Gerrel's gone, but even before then the mission had been hard, and Garrus has asked her to let him in on things like this. Plus, more than anyone else, he understands what the geth have put her through, knows how she felt after Virmire.

"I know it's more shitty pillow talk, but can we debrief?"

He nods, hand curling around her waist. "Anything you need."

What she needs is, apparently, to report back about the dreadnought, from the start of the mission. At first it's very Spectre style - the Council sometimes requires some attempt at justification for Spectres' actions these days; Agent Bau had told her it was because of Saren - but the formality starts to slip when she gets to the main battery and the struggle of a fight they'd had there.

"They knocked out Tali at one point," she says. "For a second, all I could see was..."

Another soldier of another species in another system, killed by the geth like so many before her. Drawing his mandibles, Garrus presses his forehead to hers. Eden Prime is a story she's never told him beyond the basics: She never told him about the bodies she and Dog Squad found, the screams on the comms that sometimes return to even unrelated nightmares, the deadliest game of chase she's ever played. Sometimes she thinks she wants to tell him, sometimes she thinks she might never, and sometimes, like right now, she thinks she might not have to.

"And then Shepard got her up with some medi-gel," she says. "And I know she was going to Chakwas as soon as we got back. So. Everyone's okay."

"Are _you_ okay?"

She nuzzles his cheek. "I'm getting there. Thanks to you. Glad _our_ main battery's not like that."

"Actually, it can be. You've never been in here when it's in use."

"Not helping."

"Shutting up now."

He shuts up long enough for her to narrate to the drive core, where, "There's this Reaper device holding a geth trapped like it was crucified, and then Shepard -"

"Wait," he says. "Trapped like what? My translator missed something."

"Uh," she says. Of all things she'd expected would need explanation about this mission, a simile to what's apparently a human thing wasn't one of them, and she can't really put this off like she put off 'bucket list'. "Just the origin story for now: Back in the _old_ , old days - pre electricity, let alone pre spaceflight - some countries would punish criminals by nailing them to large wooden crosses, arms out across the beam, and leaving them to hang."

Her ex-detective, ex-vigilante boyfriend opens his mouth, shuts it, and stares at her. " _What_."

"You can codex it later, but that's what this geth looked like, except without a cross." Seeing Garrus glancing to where he's left his omni-tool somewhere by the door, she hurries onwards. "And Shepard _recognized_ it."

"Wait, was this geth's name Legion?"

Ashley pauses. "Oh my God, was this the geth Tali was talking about yesterday?"

"And the one I mentioned finding on the derelict Reaper - wearing N7 armor with a big hole in it?"

"Yes! That was _so_ weird to see; you did _not_ mention that."

"It didn't seem like an important detail."

"It just looks _wrong_ , especially after Eden Prime -"

"They're not all like the ones that attacked you, then _or_ now," he says. "They're not all with the Reapers - or at least they weren't before the quarians attacked them just now -"

She props herself up on her elbows to glare at him and to reduce physical contact. "I can't believe you're defending the geth!"

Garrus stares. " _I_ can't believe you're refusing to listen when you gave _me_ a chance after all the crap in your past caused by turians!"

"You weren't on Eden Prime three years ago! And you weren't on that fucking dreadnought today."

"You weren't on the _Normandy_ last year!"

Ashley throws the blanket off of herself and gets up on shaky legs to find her armor. She gets halfway down the length of the Thanix before EDI logs on.

Before the AI can even get a word in, Garrus snaps, "Not now, EDI!" somewhere behind her.

"Shepard's calling," EDI says, a hint of reproach in her voice before she puts Shepard through.

"You weren't answering your omni-tools," says Shepard, and Ashley notices her omni-tool lit up on the floor ahead with notifications projected above it.

"We've been a little busy," she says.

"Well, I have news and orders," says Shepard. "Are you two decent?"

"No," they both blurt out.

"You've got about a minute before I come in anyway - I won't look."

" _No,_ " Ashley howls, scrambling for her gear.

It's all over the floor in no apparent order and mixed up with Garrus's. Immediately giving up on sorting them out, she looks instead for her underwear and bra. When she finally finds them, Garrus appears in front of her wearing his workout pants and an unreadable expression, and he hands her one of his tunics. She puts it on, and between the two of them, they manage to move their compression suits and the pieces of their armor under the weapons bench and stand in front of it in a feeble attempt to hide it before Shepard enters.

Shepard raises an eyebrow at their attire, but doesn't comment. "We're on our way to the Heavy Fleet to drop off Gerrel," she reports. "I'm not having someone who endangers his allies _and_ his own people on my ship."

The small part of Ashley that would like to be diplomatic thinks kicking a quarian admiral off one's ship may be a rash move. Mostly, she thinks, _Good riddance._ "Damn, Shepard," she settles for.

"Good," adds Garrus. "That bosh'tet almost killed _three_ of my girls - I wanted to kill him."

Huh. So he still counts her as one of his girls even while giving her shit about not joining the _Normandy_ while they were with Cerberus. (She can only assume Shepard's one of his girls because she's his best friend, and Tali because of their Team Dextro thing.)

"Shepard punched him in the groin," EDI contributes helpfully, with an artificial tone of awe.

" _Damn_ , Shepard," she repeats.

Shepard gives what Ashley recognizes as her embarrassed cough. "Legion said there's a Reaper base on Rannoch, but he and the quarians need some time to find it. In the meantime, I just received a report saying that the fuel depot on Cyone's gone silent. It's on the other side of the galaxy but I want to get the hell away from Gerrel right now. Garrus, we're going to go investigate."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, as usual, more formal when receiving mission orders. "Who's the third?"

"Javik."

He brightens. "I wonder if he'll let me make a copy of his rifle." Apparently forgetting they were fighting, he turns to Ashley and says, "It's an assault rifle that fires a particle beam that does a _lot_ more damage after firing it for six seconds, and it has no recoil _and_ a cooldown system -"

"You'll have to take that up with him," Shepard says. "Be ready after breakfast tomorrow. I'll leave you two rifle nerds to it."

Ashley salutes as she leaves, and while Garrus asks EDI to relock the door, she realizes that for once in her life, she doesn't _want_ to nerd out about rifles with someone who loves them just as much as she does. From the return of that unreadable expression on his face as he turns to her, neither does he.

"Hey," she says, just to break the silence between them.

He doesn't answer for a moment, just gazes at her, but eventually he says, "I'm sorry I threw last year at you," and though he still looks tense, she can tell the apology's sincere. "That was uncalled for."

"It _was_ ," she agrees. "I think enough about all that time I lost with you and Tali and everyone else without knowing that you still resent me for it."

"I don't resent you for not coming aboard," he says, shaking his head. "I was frustrated, I missed you, but I did admire that you stuck to your principles. I just meant that you also lost time with Legion."

"Yeah, well, you didn't lose anything by not being on Eden Prime."

"That's the other thing I wanted to apologize for," he says. "You were already upset about your experience on Eden Prime, even before Gerrel almost killed you. I picked the wrong time to defend the geth."

Folding her arms, Ashley nods, but considers. "I gave you a chance because I was ordered to," she says, and he winces. "And because I'd already seen you saving Dr. Michel. And sure, the First Contact War stagnated my career, but I hadn't personally seen turians taking down my entire unit."

"Okay, yes, it's different."

"But you've worked with Legion," she concedes. "And Tali thinks it could help them make peace instead of wiping the geth out."

Garrus holds very still, watching her for her next move instead of attempting a reply. It takes her a while: Today has been shitty enough that she doesn't want to keep fighting, but coming up with and then wording a compromise is hard when her temper's so easily provoked by the geth today.

"I don't want to fight over the war while we're fighting it," she says at last. "But I'm _really_ not in the mood right now to hear about how awesome a geth is, even if that geth shut down the Reaper signal and got us out of an exploding dreadnought by making us squeeze into a geth fighter. So can I finish my debrief with you, and you can talk about Legion when I'm ready?"

His sigh is more relieved than she's ever heard it. "We can do that," he says. "Obviously I disagree with your stance on the geth - I had a feeling yesterday that you had an unpopular position on the war - but I don't want to fight about it either. We can discuss it some other time, without trying to hurt each other."

With a nod, she holds up her pinky finger, and he links his end talon with it, but headbutts her too.

"Want to finish up in bed?" he asks. "You were wobbling."

She withdraws from the headbutt, but she's not finished nodding when he lifts her up in bridal carry again, making her laugh.

"How's the shoulder?" he asks, carrying her back down to his cot.

"Still sore."

He drops a kiss onto it. "I didn't want to put weight on it," he says, and suddenly she knows why he had her stand or sit the whole time. "What do you need?"

"Just some medi-gel, I think."

Garrus has yet to clear a footlocker for her, so she has some levo medi-gel in the locker they keep condoms and allergy medication in. He reaches for it after depositing her in bed, then massages the medi-gel into her still healing shoulder. Together with the physical contact, the anaesthetic make it oddly easier to finish her report on the dreadnought. He does her the service of making appalled and angry noises in the right places when she gets up to Gerrel firing on them.

"So now not only did one of our allies, whose ass we were trying to save, fire on us - fire on _both_ of humanity's Spectres _and_ his fellow admiral," she adds, still appalled if less heated about it, "but there's a geth upstairs in the war room, who we're _working_ with, after all the bullshit we've had with the geth, even just today. And I can't do this. I can't pretend there's nothing wrong with having a geth on the ship with all our classified data right there. I can't trust it."

Garrus watches her, until she realizes he was giving her more space to talk if she needed it, and nods that she's done. "I was surprised you went on that mission," he says. "Sure, we were taking out pockets of geth before the SR-1 went down, but this was a completely enclosed geth area."

"Taking out those geth before is why I thought I'd be fine," she says, annoyed at herself now. "Shepard didn't order me onto this mission: She _asked_. Said I didn't have to if I didn't want to." It's still a weird feeling. On paper, she and Shepard are equally ranked, but she's perfectly fine with answering to Shepard in the context of the _Normandy_. "And I said, 'No, I'd love to.' And I _was_ fine. Just like old times scoping tin cans with my girls, you know? Until Tali dropped."

"It's hard seeing your friends hurt even when it isn't because of an old enemy," he says.

"And it's hard having an old enemy in my _home_."

He opens his mouth like he's about to say something, visibly thinks better of it, shuts it, and tries again. "Legion would have to go through me to hurt you, or our friends."

He's trying; that's the important part. His having worked with a geth had seemed so much more abstract when he'd mentioned it before, one more bizarre thing that comes of working with Cerberus, a part of the past that would never touch her. And even if this... Legion's his friend, she's seen Garrus taking out geth that were aiming at her, she's been tackled by him when a geth actually fired on her. Those memories of the period of geth outpost cleanup between the Battle of the Citadel and the _Normandy_ being ambushed by the Collectors add more weight to his promise.

She touches his face, the back of her hand brushing against his markings. "Hey. Thank you."

"Hm?"

"For listening," she says, and then decides it's for everything since she got back. "For letting me barge in and interrupt your work. For letting me boss you around. For the sex. For helping me with ointment applications I can do myself."

He stills, studying her face. "I didn't mind any of it," he says. "And I thought after that mission, you could use someone else doing something for you."

"Thank you," she repeats, and headbutts him; his mandibles spread at the gesture. They stay like that for a long moment before she decides that it's time to let the world back in and be a professional, especially since Shepard already let herself in.

Ashley sits up, rolling her shoulder - he did good work with the medi-gel. "I'm gonna go clean my gear and write my report, but... Can you sleep over tonight?" Despite their fight, she does feel safer with him around; she just doesn't want to be unconscious in another ship battery.

"Of course," he says. "On one condition."

"What?"

"Let's just sleep on the floor with a _lot_ of blankets," he says. "I don't think either of us are in a state to wake up alone because someone fell off the couch."

Curious, she looks him over. She understands him looking out for her after being reminded of a time she was utterly alone, but he included himself in that. "You okay?"

"More okay than you are, I think, but not -" He wiggles his talons in what she's coming to recognize as a silent filler. "The hierarchy business I mentioned earlier, still worrying about my family, and the last time we fought I avoided you for a day so I wouldn't blame you for deciding to avoid a - geth apologist, or whatever."

Shit, she fought with him when he was already feeling the pressure from work, and chatting with _her_ sister can't feel great when he hasn't heard from his own twin since the war started. She kneels up to kiss his forehead the way he sometimes does to her. "No. I don't need space; I need to get my work done and I need to not hear about geth right now. You can stay with me if you're not busy."

"I'd like that," he says. "You can use my cleaning kit if you want - it's on my weapons bench, I think, unless it fell off."

"You're just trying to keep me here."

"Is it working?"

She laughs, but headbutts him. "Yeah, I'll stay."

Her promise to listen to happy geth friend stories stretches between them, and she's going to need to figure out when or how she'd be okay with hearing about it, but yes, she's staying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In more mildly AU mission pacing tweaks, I'm staggering out the Priority: Rannoch trigger missions: Koris didn't sacrifice his ship to destroy the geth planetary defense cannon during Priority: Geth Dreadnought, and will be doing that during the next chapter.


	3. interlude

"Oh my god," Ashley's saying to her vidchat screen as Garrus opens the door to her room. She's been spending more time on vidchat since her mother and sisters made it safely to the Citadel, so he hangs back in case it's her mom and/or one of her middle sisters, because he's not entirely sure they know he exists and fairly certain they don't know he's dating Ashley. At any other time, he'd help with the charade that he is nothing more to her than a friend on the squad, but after the mission he just had, he needs his girlfriend, not his squadmate or his XO. "Are you sure?"

"I got samples tested at the hospital just to make sure," says Sarah's voice, and he relaxes somewhat. Sarah's great. However, he can't see from here if anyone else is on the line, and this sounds like health information she may not want her sister's boyfriend hearing. "And it turns out that's why I've been peeing all the time!"

"Commander," says Garrus, still at the door. "Am I interrupting?" Besides the privacy issue, he doesn't want to bring the mood down; he suspects he could make even Sarah's solar power fade right now.

"Is that Garrus back there?" Sarah asks. "No, no, get over here, I want to tell you too."

Locking the door, he vaults the sofa Ashley's sitting on and sits next to her, and he schools his expression into something less depressed as Ashley adjusts her camera to include him in the frame.

"Hey, good to see you," says Sarah. "I'm pregnant! You're gonna be an uncle."

Her news barely sinks in before 'uncle' hits him like a dreadnought; Ashley goes very still at his side.

"I guess that answers whether or not you're keeping it," she murmurs.

"Of course I'm keeping them," Sarah says, as if that wasn't even a question. "They're the start of the family we wanted - there's a reason we didn't use protection - and they'll be, like, the only thing I'll have left of him."

At last, Garrus finds his voice again. "Congratulations, but... you know I'm not actually related to you, right?" For all that he worries about the Williams family like his own, for all his jokes about raising Grunt, his language doesn't actually use family words for people you're not related to; he doesn't think he's heard Ashley referring to aunts or uncles she's not related to either.

"But you will be," Sarah says breezily. "Oh, _man_ , imagine how pissed Granddad and Abuela would be that their first grandchild'll have a turian uncle."

"Sarah," Ashley says, still quiet but with a shade of what Garrus recognizes as her Commander or Spectre voice, "Garrus and I are taking it slow."

Sarah looks between them, and then her eyes widen; for a moment she looks very much like Ashley despite their different coloring and features. "You haven't talked about - crap, sorry."

"Congratulations," he repeats, trying to salvage the conversation.

"Yes!" Sarah exclaims, visibly relieved to be the subject he changed to. Thank you."

"How long does it take for humans again?"

"Nine Terran months," says Ashley; he hurriedly works out the conversion in his head.

"God, everyone's going to think I got pregnant because of the war," says Sarah, and Garrus remembers that she was married only a week before the Reapers hit. "One last piece of him."

"Your marriage certificate has the date of your wedding," Ashley says, shaking her head. "It's not like we knew the Reapers would be coming a week later. If you want to shut people up, pull up Thomas's death certificate right next to it."

"You're evil," says Sarah, sounding approving.

"She has aggressive instincts," he manages to get in.

They chat a little while longer before Ashley says, "Hey, Sar, Garrus actually just got back from a mission, and I wanna make sure he's still in one piece."

"Yeah, of course," says Sarah. "I've got portfolio stuff to do as well - the one downside of the nursing school finally letting me transfer! I'll catch you guys later."

"Bye, Sarah," Garrus says, waving as Sarah cuts the call. Ashley turns to him and opens her mouth, clearly about to ask about the mission, but he manages to cut in with, "So, you're going to be an aunt."

"My baby sister is going to be a single mother while she's still a student for a job that's hard on the body," she says flatly.

"It's not like she knew Thomas was going to die," he says.

"No, I'm not blaming her," she says. "I'm just..." She sighs. "This is going to be hard for her."

"You want the best for her," he says, nodding. Even if Sol were safe, he wouldn't want her to have a kid with no co-parent at a time like this. "But hey, nine months is a long time, right; your mom and your other sisters can help support her too."

"If she even gets those nine months," she says, and he realizes with a pang that she still doesn't think they're going to win the war.

He lifts her hand and kisses it. "We'll just have to end this war sooner. For your new nibling."

She pulls her hand into her lap.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"You kissed the finger engagement and wedding rings go on," she says.

"I always forget your species gets rings for that," he says honestly. It had come up in C-Sec as something to watch for on humans, but he's never seen much jewelry on the _Normandy_ 's human crew beyond Jack.

"Sorry," she says, taking his hand again. "Just - after what she said about you being the baby's uncle..."

He _wants_ to be, he realizes with a sudden ache in his heart. He wants to be related to this baby even if only by marriage. He wants to spoil a tiny squishy child and be able to give it back. He wants to learn how to handle a human fledgling before it's his and Ashley's own.

She would throw out 'taking it slow' and take it very fast out the airlock if he told her.

"How serious did you tell her this was?" he asks, wondering if Sarah jumped there because of something Ashley's said. After all, she'd told him she wants 'always' too.

"Breaking the regs and exclusive serious, but not..." Ashley shrugs, her expression a classic one of evasion; he's seen this on suspects before. "She went there all on her own."

"I guess this is just the next level of people's assumptions," he says. "Your squad calling me your boyfriend before we put a name to it, and now that we have one, people who know make it bigger than it is."

"Currently."

"What?"

"Bigger than it is now," she says, watching him for a reaction.

Which means it could still get bigger given time. He headbutts her, trying and failing to control the spread of his mandibles. "So you're thinking it could get bigger?"

"I'm thinking," she agrees. "I mean, not about you being the kid's uncle -"

"No, of course not," he says. Even a civil marriage would put their relationship on public record - too public for Ashley's fears about her career.

"But I'm considering upgrading our label."

And, what's more, she's telling him about it, almost without being asked. He gives up on his mandibles, letting them splay. "Okay."

She gives a shy smile of her own, one finger tracing along his unscarred mandible. "You're cute."

"I'm just happy that you're thinking," he says. On top of being another positive step in their relationship, it's also another nice distraction from today. "And for what it's worth, I think we can handle a different label." Or at least he wants them to handle it, because it would mean she might be able to handle the thought of more.

"I'm glad," she says, and presses her lips to his cheek.

He turns his head as she starts to move away, catching her by the jaw and kissing her, one that starts slow and measured and ends with her in his lap. They headbutt, Ashley's hands light on his shoulders and arms.

"Can I stay tonight?" he asks. "That assignment was kind of rough - I don't want to be alone."

Her eyes soften. "Of course, mi vida."

"I like when you call me that," he says. He may be biased, but he prefers this different undertone in his translator from her over James or Steve.

"Good," she says. "Do you want to talk about the mission?"

He's silent for long enough that she quietly adds, "That bad, huh?"

"'Kind of' was an understatement," he admits, trying and failing not to clutch at her. "I needed you, Ash."

"You shouldn't have let me talk to Sarah so long -"

"No, that was important," he says. "She had big news; good news, in my datapad. And I know we don't often match up with the Citadel: I'm never going to make you choose between me and your family, especially since we're so much closer right now and we're not going -"

She silences him with a hand on his mandible. "You didn't answer the question."

He doesn't want to talk about it, he thinks, closing his eyes and leaning into her touch. He just wants to be here with her, in this room which unlike the main halls of this deck has never known so much as abduction, let alone death or conversion; he just wants her soft and strong and safe in his arms.

But then, she'd understand. He's sure she'll read the mission reports later, but he doesn't need as many words as that report to show her how he's feeling, and telling her the hard things makes them easier to carry.

"It's not that we lost anyone," he says in time. "There was this Alliance Captain holding the line there. Tough, stubborn - you'd like her. Shepard said something about recommending her for a commendation. Her team came out okay. But there were a hundred and seven turians stationed there, and now nothing but a few Marauders."

Her forehead pressed to his, she wraps her arms around him, holding him tight.

"A hundred and seven," he repeats softly. Usually he likes numbers, but the war's numbers just hurt.

"Yeah."

"We came out here because Gerrel pissed off Shepard by firing on you, and we hit... _that_."

"I'm sorry."

"I was _furious_ when we were at that depot," he says. "The turians were from a corporate militia that worked on Cyone, and Captain Riley - the Alliance woman - said they were integrating amazingly with the asari and humans there. No one wanted to lose the planet. But now..."

"Now the grief's hitting," she says softly. "It never hits me until after the mission either."

Even in the midst of his mourning, he's struck by how much she understands him in things like this. The women he'd dated while he was in C-Sec had been civilians who probably wouldn't have understood the sometimes brutal realities of police work if they'd ever been close enough for him to bring it up.

"Yeah."

For a while, they simply breathe together, Ashley holding on through the tremors in his carapace. And then he says, "So with all that death, I'm glad to hear about some new life in the galaxy. Fledglings are cute."

" _Fledglings_ are cute," she says. "Have you ever seen a _human_ baby?"

"I've seen some," he says. There had been one rough case where someone abandoned a human baby at the precinct - they never found the parents. "They're cute too. Squishier looking than adult humans. And Sarah has Williams genes, so her kid's going to be adorable and short."

"Hey, Thomas was tall," Ashley objects. "Like, Violante's height."

"Violante is short."

"How come you can throw out turian beauty standards when dealing with me but not turian height standards?"

"Because it's funny when you get mad about being short," he says, making her glower. Funny as it is, not really the point right now. "I really am happy for Sarah. I think she'll make a good mom."

"You met her once and you're extranet friends."

"I profiled her," he jokes, getting a fond whack in the arm. "Besides, she's a Williams."

"Damn right she is."

He puts his hands on her waist and trails his talons over her stomach; later he'll blame the rough day for when he blurts out, "Wonder what a turian/human baby would look like." He's thought about it before, but he didn't mean to bring it up for a long time.

She's quiet for a moment, then says, "Check the extranet. Someone's probably made terrifying art of their idea of it."

"'s not the same," he says, and kisses her cheek. "I love you."

"I love you too," she says. "Despite your weird hybrid baby ideas."

"I don't mean we should _have_ one," he lies. He's not sure how the amino acid difference would work, but otherwise, he'd love to have kids with her one day, though he knows a child that's biologically both of theirs would be impossible. "They'd get teased at school."

"Homeschool?" she suggests.

"What, like a spacer kid? We'd be too busy with work."

Ashley chuckles. A moment in, he recognizes it as somewhat uncomfortable. He's about to apologize for - whatever it is, edging too close to big things, probably - when she gives him a long, thoughtful look and asks, "Garrus... Do you want kids? In general, not... necessarily with me."

A family has always been a nebulous part of his longterm life projections, except for when he was running Archangel, where the only future that had mattered was one with the gangs of Omega wiped out. But somewhere after seeing Ashley again, kids had crept back into his mind, as evidenced by his idle wondering about hybrid species children long before Sarah's slip of the tongue - his girlfriend becoming an aunt had only brought that desire into dangerously sharp focus.

"After the war, sure," he says, and the flicker of her eyes reminds him that she's not doing so great on that front. However, it feels more important to teeter away from this edge and admit, "Right now, I just want to talk about something besides either that mission or the fleets. Because that's... a lot."

"Oh, of course," she says, looking guiltily relieved; he recognizes that now too. "Anything?"

"Anything."

She considers, then says, "Tell me about Legion." Garrus peers at her curiously. She hadn't wanted to hear it yesterday - something's changed. "Your geth friend - that's what you and Shepard called it, right?"

"Yeah."

"I said I'd listen," she says. "And so far it hasn't killed anyone onboard."

"It could've done it by now, too. It's an incredible sniper."

"Oh, I _remember_ how good geth snipers are."

"Listening," he reminds her.

Ashley mimes zipping her mouth shut, and he settles in to tell her about the geth heretic base, about the insight Legion had offered on geth society, about the absolute trust it had put in Shepard on what to do about the heretics, about the sniper it took out shooting over his shoulder. After awkwardly not talking about his old friend even though it's right upstairs in the War Room, it feels good to not be balancing this on his carapace. She shifts in his lap as she listens, her brow furrowing in thought, but true to her miming, she doesn't say a word, just makes affirmative and surprised noises where expected.

"Do you have water?" he finishes, because monologuing like this tends to make him thirsty, moreso than when they allow each other to respond to their stories throughout.

"Yeah, I've got a bottle somewhere," she says, getting up to find it.

He watches her go, wondering what she thinks of his odd friendship with a member of the species that killed so many of her friends, before an e-mail notification lights up his omni-tool. While his first instinct is to dismiss it for when he's not spending time with Ashley, it's marked `Urgent` and has his father and sister's names in the subject line. His heart lurching, he opens it.

"They're alive," he breathes.

"Huh?"

"Dad and Sol," he says, angling the window so she can read the e-mail once she gets back with the water: A brief e-mail from a refugee center set up near a hastily converted spacefield, saying that their names came up and they're not injured, but the center doesn't have the time or bandwidth to allow them to talk to him.

Once she's done reading, Ashley presses her forehead tight against his. "Oh, thank God."

"That center's on the other side of the country from where we live," he thinks to explain. "Spirits, they've run so far but they're still not off world..." Ashley's family's made it not just off Earth, but through a series of other planets' spaceports and refugee centers.

"You've said your country has the biggest population on Palaven, right? And the population centers are pretty dense?" she asks, and he nods. "So they've probably had lots of attacks." Another nod. "It's a miracle that they got through it all without getting hurt."

Guiltily, he remembers that Ashley's family had been in an island region with a lower population than many mainland cities and even some small towns on Palaven; it makes sense that they wouldn't have to deal with Reaper attacks on the way off world, only other people evacuating. He is not being fair.

"They're gonna need more miracles than that," he says, putting his omni-tool to sleep.

She nods. "I'll keep praying."

He brushes a brief kiss against her lips. "Thank you," he says. "Not just for praying - for telling all the centers to contact me. Who knows how long it could have been until I'd heard from them."

"You're welcome," she says. "If there's any other way I can use my Spectre privileges to help you, just say the word."

Garrus tries to think of what she could possibly do, short of sending orders that his family are first priority on the escape shuttles - it wouldn't feel right. Failing that, he asks, "What about girlfriend privileges?" At her raised eyebrow, he adds, "Read to me?" If he lets himself think about his family's far too slow escape any longer, he'll come up with all the terrible possibilities (this last mission reminding him of a few ideas he's already had), but unlike her favored methods, he doesn't want a physical distraction.

Nodding, Ashley pulls up her omni-tool and pokes around for a moment before beginning to read what he recognizes a few lines in as another turian ballad by the same writer as 'their' poem. Though he'd usually point out the odd mistranslation, this time he just closes his eyes, holds her close, and lets her voice wash over him and drown his thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I lied a little, I didn't _just_ want to take the edge off: There _is_ an occasion."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A confession: The creation date on both this and the following chapter (which I'm still tidying up) is January 201 _7_ , and I've actually had them mostly written for months. It was ending them that I was struggling with.
> 
> Shoutout to my cousin who speaks English 99% of the time (the 1% being to grandmas), yet made confident and surprisingly solid drunken attempts at speaking Tagalog to our Uber driver (who was Filipino like us) after getting wasted at her hens night.
> 
> Spanish translation towards the end of the first section provided via bagog - you can mouse over those bits for the English.

His first time on the Citadel, James had stumbled upon a liquor store run by an importer who'd been happy to give deep discounts to Alliance soldiers, aid workers, and medical staff. The girl had spoken Spanish, too, a first generation spacer with Earthborn Mexican and Chilean parents, so he'd let her talk him into a bottle of strong-smelling mezcal. (Between worrying about Ashley and gawking at how removed the Citadel was from the realities of war, he hadn't needed much convincing.) He's been saving it for a special occasion, by which he means shit goes down which he needs to unwind from, so when Ashley leans back on a crate and says she wants to take the edge off, well. He has just the thing.

They pass the bottle back and forth without bothering to get glasses; he lets her hog it because she seems to need it more than he does. By the time they're halfway through, she's long finished venting about today's mission with Shepard and Legion and considerably more relaxed as they talk shit and she makes attempts at Spanish which he gently corrects her on when needed. All the way back on Eden Prime she'd explained to him that Spanish was one of her almost simultaneous first languages, but as she'd grown up on Alliance colonies that mostly used English, she'd lost it over the years, and now she understands it better than she speaks it. Still, she's definitely improved since he practised with her on Ontarom two years ago, and the mezcal combined with the lack of audience is probably loosening her tongue.

"Ash?" says Garrus, coming towards them. Ashley lights up at just the sound of his voice, which is both gross and adorable, and both she and James turn their translators back on. "Vega," he adds. "What are you two up to?"

Ashley holds out an arm in invitation. "Mi vida!"

Damn, he's pretty sure his abuela used to call abuelo that pet name. Garrus gives James a confused look as he comes over to join them, then flails hilariously when Ashley tugs him down and kisses him. James can't look for long; they normally don't so much as touch in front of other people.

"That is _not_ vodka and Paragade," Garrus says thoughtfully, touching his mouth. He drinks Tupari. There's no dextro Paragade. James does not want to think about how many times or how thoroughly he's kissed the taste from her mouth.

"Mezcal!" Ashley declares, waving the bottle around. James lunges over, an arm under her path just in case she drops it. "Try it. Really good for taking the edge off."

"Hey, no offering _my_ levo alcohol to your dextro boyfriend," James says, reaching for the bottle.

She clutches it close to her chest, where frankly he's afraid to try for it in front of Garrus. "It's mine now."

Chuckling, Garrus leans on one of the stacks of crates. "Still, I don't think I'll be trying it."

"We've got the allergy meds."

"Those are _not_ for booze," Garrus points out. James really does not want to know what they have allergy medication for. Luckily, before he can think too hard about it, Garrus adds, "I've got my own, anyway. I'll be back."

Once he's out of earshot, Ashley turns to James and says, "I lied a little, I didn't _just_ want to take the edge off: There _is_ an occasion."

Oh, shit, was he supposed to remember something? "It's not your birthday..." He's pretty sure.

"It's Armistice Day," she says, and he winces. The end of the First Contact War. Of course that would be an occasion to General Williams' granddaughter. "My family has this tradition - not a celebration, just an obligation: Mark it with a drink."

"So why'd you come to me instead of the turian you're at peace with?" he asks, genuinely curious. "Because, uh, I don't wanna make things awkward for you and Garrus; you guys have a good thing going there." Also, he and Garrus have a ceasefire over her, and James'll be damned if he's the one to break it.

"It's too weird," she says. "Because of turians, three generations of Williams' military careers got screwed over, and here I am with a good thing going with one." She pauses, and then asks, "Do you think he knows?"

"That it's weird, or that it's Armistice Day?"

"Armistice Day."

He shrugs. "You tell me, Ash."

"I don't know," she says. "He ends up with a million codex tabs researching human and Latino stuff. He might know."

"Then he probably woulda mentioned it sooner if he knew," he says, considering Armistice Day is almost over and from the way he brings up his confusion over human things, Garrus seems to have been trying to figure out more turian-human relations than just his relationship with Ashley. "You should tell him."

"About the public holiday for the day both our species got smacked down by the Council?"

"Yeah, that one, because if it hadn't happened you guys probably wouldn't be together," he says. "Tell him about this whole family obligation thing. You tell him about the stuff that's important to you, right?"

As she hums in thought, armored footsteps approach, and they both look up to find Garrus holding a bottle of something called 'Drossix Blue'.

"I've decided you two have the right idea," he says, plopping down on Ashley's other side; after just the slightest shift they're leaning against each other with an ease he doesn't see when there are more people around. James is torn: It's nice that they trust him enough to do that in front of him (because even if Ashley is getting tipsy and not thinking about this, Garrus is sober and he knows the guy would look out for his girl), but damn, he wishes he had someone to do that with. The only woman he has half a chance with is very far away.

"About what?" asks Ashley.

"Drinking," says Garrus. Once he gets his bottle open, he holds it up for a toast. "I'm celebrating."

The guy doesn't look as happy as he's seen him other times, even over little things like winning a game of poker, but Ashley clinks the mezcal against his bottle without asking about it, so James is the one to ask, "What's the occasion?"

"I heard from my family," he says, and Ashley gasps. "I talked to my dad."

"Are they okay?" she asks, and then she adds for James's benefit, "His dad and his sister were on Palaven."

"Still there," he says. James winces: After seeing the fires on Palaven all the way from Menae, he wouldn't wish that on anyone. "Trying to make it to the evacuation centers - there's only a few ships left. Sol broke her leg. We lost the connection before he could tell me more."

James stares. "And you're _celebrating_ this?"

"I'm celebrating them being _alive_ ," Garrus says, sharp and raw.

Damn, fair point. James nods and holds out a hand for the mezcal. "Right. We're celebrating."

Ashley takes a long drink before passing the bottle over, and then she turns back to Garrus to snuggle into his side. "I'm glad they're alive, Garrus."

"Or were," Garrus says, and drinks again.

"You got to talk to your dad," James reasons. He hasn't talked to his own father in years, and doesn't particularly care to find out whether he's still alive or got taken out by the Reapers (but cares more that he _doesn't_ care than about his dad). "That's huge, man."

Garrus nods. "It's something."

With a swig of mezcal, James stands abruptly. "If we're celebrating, we need to dance." No dancing to mark Armistice Day because that had been an obligation, not a celebration, but this is _good_ news. Besides, Garrus is looking too moody for the celebration he's declared. "C'mon, man, I know you're picky with your tunes."

His mandibles flaring, Garrus opens an app on his omni-tool and pokes around for a while before a strong beat comes thumping through the small onboard speaker. This, James can work with way better than moody.

" _Nice_."

"I went to one of their concerts when they played Omega," says Garrus. "Best night of my life that didn't involve this girl."

Ashley laughs and hits him in the arm, but from the delighted smile on her face, she's flattered. "Shut up and dance."

This was his idea, so James gets up to lead by example. He starts dancing along, his signature fist pumping feeling oddly small in the big, empty shuttle bay, and once the vocals finally come in, he recognizes it as an Expel 10 song he'd heard on Omega ( _now_ he's envious of Garrus going to their concert), but some kind of remix of it.

"Up," he says, gesturing at the two lovebirds.

Ashley's up first, her legs looking longer with her side to side steps and swirls of her hips, a familiar move from shore leave on Eden Prime and Ontorom, but she throws in a few new moves too. With another swig from his Drossix Blue, Garrus stands, and starts... shuffling. Shit, this is really bad. He's seen enough turians dancing in Purgatory to know that this is not a turian thing, but it does look oddly familiar. As Ashley laughs and moves towards him, it clicks.

"What the hell?" James asks. "Did Shepard teach you to dance?"

"No," Garrus huffs.

"He was doing this at the afterparty for the Battle of the Citadel too," Ashley reveals, giggling again - yep, she's well on her way to wasted, but at least she's giggly rather than moody this time.

"What's wrong with it?"

"What's _right_?" James retorts. "C'mon, Ash, we gotta show him how it's done."

She raises an eyebrow. "How it's _really_ done?"

He holds out a hand to her. "You know it."

With a grin, she takes both his hands, and they start a fast salsa to the alien beat. In the field, Ashley's a natural leader, but on the dancefloor, she's a fantastic follower, completely trusting him and going with his flow even through turns and dips he's rusty on.

"This one time on Ontorom," she says to Garrus over her shoulder, "people on the squad didn't believe that I was Latina, because my Spanish is crap -"

"You're getting better, though your accent still sounds kinda gringo," he tells her.

Half pleased, half insulted, her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. "And my name's even whiter than my face. So James gets up and says -"

"Ash, ¿quieres bailar?" he says with her.

"And we start dancing, like my abuela taught me, like we used to back on Eden Prime during downtime."

"And there was a lot of downtime," he adds, dropping her barely a foot above the floor with the word 'down'.

"And the whole squad is _silent_ ," she finishes triumphantly.

Kind of how Garrus is now, come to think of it. His jaw is dropped and his mandibles wide as James pulls Ashley back up to her feet. It takes him a while to find his voice again, but when he finally does, it's to ask, "Can you teach me?"

Her smile going sly, Ashley steps over to him, her hips still moving. "I _know_ you have rhythm, Garrus Vakarian, even if you don't have moves. And I also happen to know you have reach. I think you should learn something a little more... sexy."

"Oh, shit, Ash," says James. "You wanna teach this shuffling turian to tango?"

"I wanna teach this shuffling turian to tango!" she declares.

"Famous last words," he says with a sigh. "Let's show him what he's getting into."

They do a quick demonstration for him, including a few flashy looking moves that should hopefully still be easy enough for a beginner, and then they break it down, James walking him through the basics. They've taught each other the odd hand to hand move before and luckily Garrus keeps that same mindset for this, carefully following instructions and remembering steps after being shown them only a few times, but when it comes to stringing them together -

"What the hell?" James murmurs, watching Garrus count out the rhythm as he steps through the basic walk. Tango should look decent on him, because you keep your knees bent forward in tango and turian knees do that naturally, but on Garrus... Damn, the guy might just be a genuinely awkward dancer.

"You know what," says Ashley, setting down his bottle of mezcal (damnit). "Let me at him."

She takes position in front of Garrus, giving him a few quick pointers on where she should be feeling his weight leading her, then just follows. It still looks awkward as hell, but it's a definite improvement.

"Mi vida," she says. "Relax."

"I'm trying to remember the steps _and_ lead you," he says.

"That doesn't mean you need to be all stiff like that," says James. "Loosen up, man, you're not this tense when you're sparring."

Ashley whispers something to him, and Garrus splutters with laughter, making him miss a step, but once he finds the beat again, he's definitely looser, James will give her that.

"Part of it's just practice," James adds, deciding it's safer to not know what she said. "Once it's in your body memory, you won't have to think as hard, and once you're more confident leading, you can make shit up and Ash will follow you."

"Ah," says Garrus. "Like fighting when you know your moves."

"Exactly."

James sits back down with the mezcal, calling out the steps when it looks like Garrus has forgotten them, but they _are_ coming easier to him now, and it probably helps that Ashley is very willing to adjust their position or count them into the next sensible starting beat with only a laugh and some encouragement. Soon enough, all James has to do is skip a track when something too fast for Garrus or the wrong timing comes up.

For all that he's been telling Garrus to loosen up, he's only realizing now that this is the most comfortable he's seen _Ashley_ since she was promoted, more than even their shit talking and Spanish practice before Garrus had shown up. This is the fun Ash he met on shore leave on Eden Prime, letting her hair down without their asshole lieutenant around; a far cry from the angry drunk at his goodbye drinks on Ontarom. She's told him Garrus makes her happy, but this is what that _looks_ like. During a war as shitty as this one, it's incredible to see on one of his best friends.

"Alright, lovebirds, you guys don't need me to celebrate with you any more, so I'm gonna go drink my weight in water," he says, standing up.

"Ooh, sorry for making you the third wheel," Ashley realizes, but he waves her off.

"Hey, it got this one smiling," he says, pointing at Garrus, who looks considerably less stressed than when he walked in, despite his confusion over dance moves.

Garrus nods. "Thank you," he says. "The dance class really did remind me to celebrate more."

"Any time, man."

Ashley hugs him, all sweaty and gross from dancing like she is after a mission. "Gracias por este noche."

"Es _ta_ noche ," he corrects her, and she groans. "Estabas tan cerca, Ash."

"Buenas noches," she says, and he makes for the elevator.

He's headed upstairs before he realizes, "Shit, my mezcal," and asks EDI to reverse, but when the doors open again, Ashley and Garrus have their foreheads pressed together and what Ashley once said about turian headbutts finally makes sense. It looks way too intimate for him to want to interrupt.

"Forget it, EDI, just up to the crew deck," he says, and as the elevator starts moving again, he adds, "But let 'em know if someone's heading down there, okay?"

"I will," EDI promises.

 

Ashley's pretty sure Garrus is improving. She wouldn't enter him in one of those charity dance shows any time soon, but without James around, and with her deliberately talking about other things as they dance (he and James _chat_ while sparring and it's weird, but she thought it might help here), he relaxes a little more, letting the repeated movements become habit, letting his instincts and Ashley's good following skills take over instead of panicking when he gets things wrong. Plus, this is surprisingly fun - she hasn't thought about dancing with him before, most of her associations with dancing involving witnesses, but this new form of physical intimacy with him is nice, as is sharing a piece of her cultures.

She doesn't push him when he calls it quits for the night, pleading tiredness. They collect their unfinished bottles (it seems James left the mezcal behind, and she's not about to tell him otherwise) and head for her room, since it's closer to the elevator and they're both a little wobblier than they'd like. Garrus, less tipsy, is right there to brace her on the way to the couch, and he lets her lie on top of him instead of doing their usual spooning and trying not to fall. He's harder than the couch cushions, but he's warm and he's steady and he's _hers_.

One hand settling on her lower back, Garrus gently combs his talons through her hair. "That... was fun. Hard, but fun."

"That's our new workout," she jokes.

"Stretch some different muscles and hopefully with less chance of hurting each other," he says with a grin, and he nuzzles her as she laughs. When she falls silent again, his gaze goes thoughtful. "What's this about you taking the edge off?"

The first version trips off her tongue first. "All this stuff with the geth lately. Your stories about Legion were nice and all, but it doesn't _tell_ Shepard the important things like having to go into the consensus. It's stressing me out." Which is true, but hardly the main event.

"So you were drinking with James because he's a little less geth friendly?" Not exactly what she wanted him to take from this, but sure. At her nod, his mandibles draw. "Even _I_ would call it out on something like that."

"Oh."

"It kept us in the loop on the geth base," he says. "It should damn well have told Shepard what she was getting into this time. It's almost being _more_ secretive this tour, about as well timed as the quarians deciding to attack the geth."

"You know, I was really ready to shoot up some flashlights today," she says. "I even specifically marked Legion as a friendly in my HUD. And then it just ended up Shepard being downloaded into them -"

"Uploaded, if anything," says Garrus; she flicks his nose for his troubles.

"And all I could do was watch her stuck in that pod thing, twitching once in a while," she says. "I _hate_ feeling helpless like that, especially on missions. Like, damn, she could have left me on the ship and I wouldn't be so pissed off."

"Yeah, missions like that are hard enough for me after watching her get spaced," he says. "I can't imagine what they're like for you after Horizon as well."

She didn't even spell it out and he _gets_ it - he gets _her_. He was even understanding about someone he'd been defending up until now. Maybe he'll get this, too. "Garrus... It wasn't just the mission."

He simply looks at her, and waits.

"It's Armistice Day," she says.

"Which culture?"

"Alliance, actually," she corrects him. "For the end of the First Contact War."

Garrus absorbs this, then says, "I'm listening."

"My family has this... obligation. To mark it. With a drink or two," she says, reaching out for the bottle to illustrate. "Some years I mark it with a friend. Split one with Shepard a few years ago."

Though he eyes the bottle, he says nothing.

"And on days like today, it just hits me really hard. How my family - how _I've_ been so affected by this war with turians, and now I'm in love with one."

His touch on her waist light, he nods.

"So I marked an Alliance holiday with an Alliance friend who somehow has better booze than me even though I'm a higher pay grade," she says, and takes another drink of said better booze.

"You don't need to defend yourself for drinking with Vega," he says gently. "Or for going to him instead of me for something. I'm glad you have such a good friend, and I can see why Armistice Day would be weird for you."

She settles, feeling chastened despite herself. "I know."

"Did it help?"

After a moment to assess, she nods. "Yeah, it did," she says. "For just a little while, I felt a bit more old school Alliance like before Saren or like my family before me."

"Do you miss that?"

"I miss the galaxy not being under attack from the Reapers," she says, and he snorts, but nods. "Boredom was a blessing in disguise. But I don't miss... how I felt about myself back then. Or the shit my CO gave me about my grandfather. And I don't miss not having you."

His gaze soft, Garrus leans up to headbutt her, and she smiles.

"I was just wondering because..." His eyes search hers, curious. "Maybe I'm saying this because we don't _have_ an Armistice Day for the end of the Relay 314 Incident so I might not really get it, but to me, that dance with you seemed like a good way to mark peace between the species. A turian and a human doing something together, on a turian and human designed ship."

Surprised, she contemplates, before shaking her head. "I think you're missing the family factor," she says. "That obligation's for how it affected us, not for peace."

"Ah," he says. "Well, you ended up doing both - a little of what you and your family had then, a little of what you and I have now."

And both were good, she realizes; they both helped in very different ways. "Maybe we can do that again next year." It's an effort not to add 'if we get a next year', to focus on the _what_ and not the _if_ , but an Armistice Day tango with her turian boyfriend is one more thing to fight for.

Delight in his eyes, he tips his mandibles up in approval. "Look at you, talking about 'next year'. Is this what it takes to get you talking about the future, a bottle of whatever this is?"

" _Maybe_ ," she repeats, his smile contagious. "It's hard to see next _week_ right now, let alone next year. Maybe I'm just dreaming, like you."

"Dreams are good to fight for too," he says.

"You know what, I'll drink to that," she says, and they clink their bottles together; Garrus's Drossix Blue is smaller than the mezcal bottle but he's almost finished it. After their impromptu toast, she gazes at him, thinking about how he's always wanted more, how he said their time apart gave him time to dream. "What do you dream about?"

His breath catches, and he carefully puts the Drossix Blue down on the floor. "Too much," he says eventually, his voice and eyes soft, but he looks pleased to be asked.

"Okay," she says, touched that even when asked directly, he's trying to spare her fears, and that he's still dreaming even with their fight over geth and his stress over his family. "It's just... Certain... events lately got me wondering if you wanted... Never mind," she decides.

"If I wanted what?"

Well, she started it. She gives herself a moment to mentally brace herself before asking, "Do you want kids, Garrus? With me, this time."

He stiffens beneath her, and his voice drops as he says, "I do. Still after the war, not right now, but..."

It's so cute that he thinks there's an after, but more importantly: "You know I can't..." He stares at her, surprised, but she keeps going. "You could be with a turian woman who could -"

Arching up, he headbutts her. "I don't want kids with anyone but you," he says, as if it should have been obvious. "I don't care if we use a surrogate, or adopt, or whatever, as long as we're in the parenting thing together. And as long as you want them too."

What the hell did she do to deserve him? She hugs him as tightly as she can lying down, her cheek pressed to his; he hesitates before wrapping his arms around her in return.

"That sounds great," she says honestly. "That sounds - amazing."

He draws back, his eyes searching hers. "Are you just saying that because I want it? I know you said we should take things slow -"

"That was a while ago," she cuts in. "I've always wanted kids, I just never thought I'd... have someone to have them with. Or the peace to have them, after Eden Prime. So... I buried it." Like she buried every other weakness trying to chase her career.

"When we get an after - when you get that peace - you have me," he says, headbutting her.

She smiles, a little sadly, at how easily he says 'when'. "More dreams?"

"Humor me a little, sweetheart, dream with me for a while," he says, and God, she wants to, even though it's hard to let herself want so much. "How many kids?"

"At least three," she says without thinking, because this is something she _has_ thought about, and Garrus nods. "And hopefully not all the same gender."

"Mm, I always thought at least two," he says. "Three's not much more. Species?"

Ashley pauses, and then frowns. "The last time I thought about this, that wasn't a question."

"Same here," he admits. "But there are a lot of orphans around, and there's going to be a lot of baby krogan."

"Imagine the destruction a baby krogan could cause," she says, haunted by the mental image, and he shudders. She points at herself and then at him. "At least one of each? I don't even want to think about other species right now."

"The only real thought I've had about other species is that I don't even know how to look after a quarian child," says Garrus. "Tali's told me about _bubbles_."

"Oh, God," she says. "No quarian kids until their immune systems get better." She hums in thought. He wants her to dream with him, they'll negotiate the dream. "Planet, space station, or ships?"

"Planet or space station, for sure," he says. "No child of mine is going to be a spacer."

"Your mom was a spacer!"

"And she got a lot of crap for it," he says. "I'm not putting our kids through that."

"Okay, good point," she concedes. Humanity doesn't have quite the same disdain for spacers as turians, who have an attachment to their home colonies and a habit of putting it on their faces, but any kids of theirs would be judged by both cultures' standards. "I grew up on the ground, that was important to Dad, but it was on seven different planets by the time I finished grade school. So I don't mind whether it's a planet or a space station, but definitely _one_ , stationary place." How that's going to work when she doesn't plan on leaving the military for anything except death, she's not sure, but that's what dreams are for.

"Both our species' homeworlds are a mess," he says, and she nods, her touch gentle because unlike her, he's actually _from_ his homeworld. "How's Amaterasu doing?"

"That's not home," she says, though nowhere really is after moving around so much. "What about the Citadel? We can get both our food pretty easily there, and we won't be the only cross-species family."

"I like it," he says. "Have you ever thought about names? I haven't."

"Kaidan as a middle name," she says immediately, even though she's never met or even heard about a turian with a middle name.

"Why not a first name?" he asks. "I've heard humans also sometimes name children after the dead."

"Because they'd have at least one of our surnames, and that's more than enough of a reputation without knowing their first name was another great man."

"What do you mean, at least one of our surnames? Whose do you want our dream kids to have?"

She considers, and then says, "I want more mezcal." He hands her the bottle, and she drinks a mouthful before going on, "'cause you know I can't take yours, right?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead," he says. "I didn't think I could."

Oh no, that's her fault. "But you'd thought about kids?"

"They've always been a distant future life goal," he explains, which makes sense; that was how she'd thought about her impossible-seeming three kids. "They didn't become a real possibility until Sarah said she was pregnant. Nothing's real about name changes while we're still only calling each other girlfriend and boyfriend, and not even to everyone."

"Yeah, I get it." Ashley touches his mandible, thinking: She can't make kids a more real possibility, not with the war on, not with their relationship still private, but she's been thinking about changing one thing he mentioned for a while now. And what better day for it than the day of peace between their species? "Be my partner, Garrus," she says, and then repeats it with the Apien equivalent of domestic partnership.

Those hours of extranet research and listening and practice must had paid off in her pronouncing it better than she thought, because his eyes and the spread of his mandibles widen, bright and beautiful.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...in an Experimental Style and a short chapter, that's what love is.

Love is secrets, whenever they're in mixed company. It's introducing each other as squadmates, as her Gunnery Officer, as his XO. (At least "this is my squadmate" or "this is my XO" is better than the "this is Ashley" he'd resorted to with Jordan.) It's continuing to hide his relationship status on his public profiles when he'd rather update it to "in a relationship". It's the turn of his stomach as he tells people only one truth and not the most important one. It's always looking over his shoulder before saying something unprofessional. It's locking doors instead of just closing them. It's making sure he's using his Palaven accounts to contact her on Spectre lines, never their Alliance comms that get saved and examined on a remote server somewhere. It's passwords on the locker in his room he keeps the meds and condoms in and the one she uses for her uniforms and pajamas. It's being so very careful not to mark each other during sex. It's a sting that medi-gel can't heal.

Love is touch, the second they're alone without a chance of someone walking in without warning. Maybe it's because this started with sex, maybe it's because it turns out his Ash is more physically affectionate than Commander Williams, maybe it's because they need the physical reassurance that they're _together_ after all their time apart, whatever it is, it's backing her against doors as he locks them. It's his head and carapace in her lap. It's her body tucked into his side, his arm around her shoulder. It's his talons in her hair, on her waist. It's her fingers on his colony markings, his scars. It's headbutts as greetings and when conversations turn serious. It's spooning together on one of her couches (and being utterly unsurprised when she falls off or almost pushes him off in her sleep). It's tango practice that he thinks he's slowly getting better or at least less forgetful at. Sometimes on bad days when they need it (or good days when they dare) it's holding hands under the table while they're sitting next to each other in the mess. It's honestly more physical contact than in all of his previous relationships added together, before even factoring in sex.

Love is words, what they mean said by someone far away or long ago or both. It's the poetry they sometimes read each other before going to bed, whether together or over the intercom; it's the verses he challenges her to recite while he tries his best to distract her with tongue and teeth and talons (he turns off his translator and listens to her forget). It's the songs he sings along with while driving or listening in his room, because what are songs but poetry set to music? It's the lines they claim as "ours", the descriptions they say apply to each other or to "us". It's the way they feel put into words far better than they ever could.

Love is labels, the constant search for a word that truly, fully describes their relationship and how they want their relationship to be. It's starting with what feels like an understatement, but waiting until she's ready. It's attaching words to stages of a relationship and dreaming of the next one, of asking to take it. It's defining the differences between labels and even between translations. It's the legal rights and privileges that come with some labels in his culture, most of which they are in no position to use now. It's the pleasant surprise of fairly correct pronunciation of Apien from lips and vocal cords that aren't in the slightest made for it. It's a request made on mezcal and memorial days and never spoken of since.

Love is learning, every single day. It's looking up human customs on the extranet and quizzing the human crew ("I'm outnumbered here and it's my third tour on a human ship; I should know these things by now"). It's explaining things he's never thought to question. It's backing up when a word doesn't translate or means something different. It's adding calendars of commonly celebrated human holidays and Roman Catholic holidays to his omni-tool and checking them in his visor. It's slowly unpeeling the layers of history and finding out what they've missed. It's figuring out what they like and don't like and what they can compromise on, because being in a relationship like this is new to both of them.

Love is work, because they've been waiting too long to give up when things aren't immediately and effortlessly perfect. It's recognizing that he is a third way she's splitting the focus of her life (family, Alliance, boyfriend) and that which one comes first can change from minute to minute. It's letting down his walls and allowing himself to be open with his feelings (fear, regrets, guilt) and trusting her not to run or turn on him. (Javik says not to trust other species. He doesn't know Sidonis was turian - Garrus won't let him touch him.) It's carving out private time in their days to spend with each other, even if it's just a few precious minutes before ship or war business interrupts them. It's trying to understand each other even when they're seeing things in completely different ways. It's communicating how they feel no matter how useless it feels or how much they disagree, because they spent too long unable to communicate at all. It's finding water and food and medication for two instead of one, because if he feels terrible then she, with her smaller frame and bigger bottle of booze, must feel worse. (At least James had also predicted this outcome and saved him the trouble of trying to cook a breakfast he can't taste test.) It's gallantly resisting the urge to laugh at hungover whining about Shepard being a space pirate.

Love is worrying, every time Shepard takes Ashley ashore without him (which was often, while he was grounded; she'd thought it was because she was the only active duty sniper but he's not the only one who missed her against the Collectors). It's going down to the shuttle bay disagreeing on her loadout right up until she gets out and mods two guns he hadn't suggested. It's pacing in the shuttle bay when Cortez leaves, until he realizes he's being clingy again and flounces off to the battery. It's calculus disagreeing with him and EDI silently changing his alterations back. It's standing in the cockpit instead, idly trading insults with Joker over the comms while he listens out for Shepard's call for a pickup. It's the relief when either Ashley comes to see him or he gets impatient and goes to see her and she's fine, nothing a little medi-gel won't fix.

Love is hope, even though neither of them are inherently hopeful people. It's the belief that they can get through both the war and the more domestic difficulties in their lives, the belief that they are stronger together if not unstoppable. It's occasionally allowing himself to dream of a future, to picture their lives and imagine the details, to fight for those dreams so that she can help fill out those details. It's daring to ask her more about a dream, when she's drunk and asks first. It's remembering that people grow, they both have, and so she has the potential to grow some more, especially when she's actively trying to. It's remembering that the culture she's scared of revealing their relationship within grows too, that within their very lifetimes, the _Normandy_ as a bilaterally designed ship used to be unthinkable, and he's seen more humans in mixed species relationships every year since coming to the Citadel.

Love is family, a third one (because there's the Vakarians, and then there was the _Normandy_ , and now there's two of the five Williams women and he hopes there will be more). It's Sarah sending him vidmail that's half questions because she wants to get to know him and then half rambling about her day because she wants him to get to know her. It's gossip from Aina that Mrs. Williams keeps trying to make her dextro food as a thank you for training her youngest, and her suspicions, the same as Sarah's, that Mrs. Williams will one day use her as a taste tester for food for _him_. It's a surprise, really, especially after so many relationships where he didn't meet families at all.

"You have not responded nor used the console for four minutes and forty-three seconds," says EDI. "Is this a bad time?"

"Spirits, EDI, I don't know. It's a big concept," he says. "Why do you ask?"

"I am analyzing romantic relationships across species boundaries," she says. "You are one of four people aboard this ship in a cross-species relationship besides my own."

They'd never thought to hide it from EDI because it would have been impossible, but now it occurs to him to wonder just how many crew secrets she's keeping. Garrus massages the back of his neck. "Except for maybe salarians, I don't think love really changes between species." It has been perhaps the one thing that he and Ashley haven't had to explain.

"Cross-species relationships are the most approximate model I can find for an organic-synthetic relationship."

Ah. For a moment, he contemplates redirecting her to romance vids ( _Fleet and Flotilla_ comes to mind, and doesn't it have a dating sim adaptation she could play in five minutes?), but decides against it. "What did the girls say?"

"Liara deems it private information which she did not want to share," she says, which doesn't surprise him. "Shepard spoke of emotional connections and mutual respect. Ashley was silent for twenty-three seconds, and then recited from the Corinthians."

"The what?" he asks, after fruitlessly waiting for a translation.

"Epistles from a human religious text," she says. "I am sending the relevant section to your visor."

Text appears in his visor before she finishes the sentence, and he gets a couple of lines in before she adds, "Joker sang an approximation of a late twentieth century Earth pop song. I then turned off his access to the deep space radio stations he likely heard it on, and though he frequently claims to hate them, he complained," and he realizes he still hasn't answered her original question.

"Love is... someone becoming part of your life and you becoming part of theirs, wanting as much happiness and success for them as you want for yourself, and working just as hard for it, together," he says. "It's when someone can improve your day just being in the same room as you, or if you so much as hear their voice or read something they wrote you. It's what Shepard said, it's what Ash was reading, it's more than I can put into words, and it's the best thing that ever happened to me and the best choice I make every day."

EDI's silent for a moment, before saying, "Thank you, Garrus. You have given me more data to consider."

"You're welcome," he says, shutting down the Thanix console and going for the door. "Good luck figuring it out."

"I believe you have improved my chances," she says. She pauses, then adds, "Ashley is in her quarters," before logging out, briefly making him wonder if she's somehow reading his mind.

He taps the text through to his visor, then reads as he walks to Ashley's quarters, nearly bumping into Ensign Copeland along the way. When he enters her room, Ashley sits up and turns around at the sound of the door opening, but all he says as he tags the lock is, "Love is patient, love is kind."

She gazes at him with soft, reverent eyes as he reads off the rest of the passage EDI sent him, moving slowly so that he only sits down next to her and slides an arm around her waist on the last line he was given: "Love never fails."

Ashley headbutts him, one hand light on his neck. "So have you been researching my religion, or talking to EDI?"

"Talking to EDI," he says. He's still making his way through several tabs about Roman Catholicism and suspects he'll have to give her his list of additional questions he's finding difficult to research before it gets too long. "It was an interesting question."

"Yeah? What did _you_ tell her?"

Garrus considers, then calls out, "EDI, can you play back my answer from earlier?" He winces when she does so. "I hate how I sound in recordings. My voice never comes out right."

Absently, Ashley pats his face, and says, "It's a good definition, though."

"I tried," he says. "I like yours, too. Is that... what you believe love should be, what you need from me? From us?"

"Yeah," she says, her gaze suddenly going shy. "It's what I strive for, with my family and friends, too, not just with us. I... know I have trouble with some bits: Always trusts. Rejoices with the truth. Keeps no record of wrongs."

He chooses to set the truth thing aside, because she might be open about them one day. "You _do_ kind of hold grudges."

"I'm working on that," she says, lifting her head. "EDI, how much have we been talking since I came onboard, not counting ship requests?"

The total's not in minutes, but in _hours_. He blinks. "You... have a grudge against EDI?"

"Her mobile platform _did_ almost kill me," Ashley points out, and he winces, reaching up to cradle the back of her head. No wonder they've never gone ashore together, and no wonder Ashley never picks EDI for her squads when she gets to lead. "No, that makes it hard to look at her, but it's more just... AIs. Synthetics."

"Eden Prime," he realizes.

"Virmire," she adds, nodding.

He bumps his forehead against hers. " _Ash_ -"

"Reapers," she says. "Please just let me talk. This isn't a guilt thing; I'm _fine_ on that front."

He can never be too sure about that, but he shuts his mouth and nods.

"The geth didn't just kill all these people I cared about, they also - we _thought_ they drove the quarians from their homeworld. Tali's had to deal with so much crap because of that. But the way she and Legion worked together... the way the quarians are working with the geth..."

She sighs, opening an omni-tool window and angling it so he can read the title screen for _Geth Attack: Eden Prime Fundraising Edition_ , a video game, from the looks of it. "I couldn't bring myself to trust Legion. Not when we rescued it, not when it said Shepard should interface with the Consensus. Even after all you told me, I just couldn't do it. Shepard was too polite to say so, but I'm willing to bet that's part of why she took you to the Reaper base on Rannoch instead of me and my big mouth. And now the geth are our _allies_ , however long that'll last...

"I don't know if I'll ever trust them," she admits, closing the game. "But I need to _try_. I need to be _better_. The quarians have put hundreds of years aside to work with them; I should be able to put aside _three_."

It's funny: He's always appreciated her as she is, only really poking her towards promotions he thought she deserved with her skills and hoping that she would find the courage to be with him openly, but he should have realized from her wanting Infiltrator training that she's always trying to step up her game. It makes sense she'd want to become a better person too, as fantastic as she is already.

Naturally, he'll support her in it. But interrupting her in something obviously important for her to say would be the opposite of support, so he simply nods encouragingly. She smiles back and cups his scarred cheek in her hand, stroking his colony markings with her thumb.

"I figured out how to trust aliens, even the ones that ruined my family's reputation for three generations, and I got you out of it. I'm trying to figure out how to trust synthetics, and EDI's my first step."

Garrus waits for a moment after she finishes, before saying, "Can I?"

"Yeah," she says. "Sorry, that was... a speech."

"I just hope that your figuring out how to trust synthetics doesn't end in you leaving me for a Geth Prime," he says, and she chuckles and kisses him on the nose. "I'm glad you're making the effort. No - I'm _proud_ of you."

"Thanks," she says, accepting a longer headbutt. "I mean, I have my limits - I still flinch when I see EDI's platform walking around - but I'm working on it."

"If it helps, I have more stories about Legion," he says. "Just... not right now." Seeing Legion give himself up to help his entire species had hit him hard enough to try and busy himself with recalibrating the cannons from the orbital strike after returning from Rannoch, when usually he goes to Ashley as soon as he's done cleaning up his guns and armor from missions.

She nods, growing more serious. "I heard what happened," she says. "Tali already asked Shepard if she could put his name on the memorial."

Not for the first time, it occurs to him that he, Tali, and Shepard were the only ones on the SR-2 now that worked with Legion in the field, though Gabby and Kenneth worked with him on the ship. "I'd like to be there when she does."

"I'll let her know." She pauses, and then says, "I know this is weird timing for you, but you know I've been thinking about it, and you told me to ask again when I'm sober - and you lost a friend today. I don't want to lose you as an understatement."

She hasn't brought up his response to her request since that night with James and a bottle and a half of alcohol; he'd almost been wondering if she hadn't remembered asking, but he hadn't wanted to potentially scare her off by checking. "Go on."

"I still want you to be my partner, I still want to be yours," she says, and his mandibles splay, but she keeps going, repeating it with the Apien word, well pronounced, for good measure. "This isn't an impulse. This isn't because you complained when we were drunk, or because it was Armistice Day. This is only a little bit because I don't want you to die only for me to tell my sister I lost my boyfriend, when you are so much more than that to me."

He had turned her down that night, but now he headbutts her. "I will, of course I will," he says. He'd been wondering if she'd even remembered it the next day, but hadn't wanted to risk scaring her off by asking in case she'd forgotten. They've done so much on drunken impulse that he'd wanted changing their label to be a fully aware decision with no chance they'd forget, and he definitely didn't want it to be because he mentioned it was blocking some of his dreams, or because of a date on a calendar he neglected to look up when it appeared in his visor. "Not on an impulse, not because I'm grieving: Because I love you, so I want some things to be easier for you because you're with me instead of our relationship making everything harder, and I've been waiting for you to be ready."

Her eyes brighten. "Damn, love really is patient. Or maybe it's just you."

"It also always hopes, even when expecting the worst," he says.

"Now _that_ is just you, but I'm so glad," she says, smiling. "Partner."

"I'm gonna have to get used to that word," he says with a grin. "Since most people who know won't have the Apien one translate for them."

Her brow furrows. "Yeah, why _is_ that?"

"I guess some linguist decided 'partner' didn't get all the nuances across."

"I was reading about them," she says, delightfully confirming his suspicions that she understands she's asked him for something that can come with actual legal privileges, not just a title. "Got a little confused by how some of it works cross-species, and I didn't find anything for the Alliance."

He nods - he's looked into this himself. "The Hierarchy has agreements with most species' homeworld governments but they might not have made one with the Alliance yet," he explains. "But you'd probably be able to claim some of the less bureaucratic things."

"Do you _want_ to try and file for the bureaucratic things?"

"Not now," he says honestly. "A lot of it, we're not about to use any time soon." Huge purchases, adoption, or immigration to Palaven or the colonies aren't really on their agenda for the time being, but it's nice of her to ask, to allude to the overarching question of whether he wants their relationship on government record.

"What about the medical things?"

Ah, those they are definitely in a position to use, with how dangerous their work can be and his own accidental habit of coming face to face with Reapers. He considers carefully, then decides to rejoice with the truth. "I trust you with power of attorney, to decide what happens to me if I can't," he says, and her eyes widen. "And you're already my first contact with both militaries."

"I trust you too," she says. "But I still haven't decided whether I feel okay with putting that on record."

"We can wait." Love is patient, he reminds himself.

"I know one thing I don't want to wait for," she says. "Rejoicing with the truth: When we get back to the Citadel, when we're on that shore leave Hackett ordered - I'm going to tell my family about you. If it works out, do you want to meet them?"

Garrus smiles, open and bicultural. They've both been wanting it for a while; how brave of her to give it a try. "I'd love to," he says, and then he calls out, "EDI, love is meeting the family and hoping they like you."

For a moment, EDI's silent, and then she says, "You and Shepard killed Liara's mother," in a tone that's almost confused, for her.

Ashley splutters, and he retorts, "She was _indoctrinated_ , and that was _before_ Shepard and Liara got together."

"I see," says EDI, logging out.

"So," he says to Ashley. "What's our plan of attack for your family?"

"You're probably not helping EDI calling it that," she says, but she starts laying out ideas anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ash only told EDI [the first letter to the Corinthians 13.4-8](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13), so that's what EDI gave Garrus.


End file.
